From The Sahel To Myanmar, Moscow Military Forum Strengthens Kremlin’s Networks In Africa And Asia

From the massacres in North Africa to the coups in Southeast Asia, and the eternal fire in the Middle East, Moscow is hosting more than 100 delegations from all corners of the globe from Tuesday to Thursday to discuss some of the planet’s most unstable powder kegs, and to do business. The 13th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues, as this forum is known, is a showcase for Russian weapons, and among its clients will be the Sahel countries. According to a recent report by the Spanish Department of National Security, most of the migrants arriving by boat in Spain are escaping the terror in the African region, abandoned by France a year ago. Today, Moscow is trying to take its place.

The event in the Russian capital addresses “a new global security architecture.” Representatives of intelligence services from countries friendly to Russia, such as China and North Korea, and coup-installed regimes from other parts of the world where Moscow is seeking a foothold to exploit their resources or impose its agenda, such as Mali and Myanmar, attended the event. Other figures invited included the leader of the Bosnian territory of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, who is subject to an arrest warrant from Sarajevo for promoting illegal separatist laws.

The event is chaired by the head of the Russian Security Council, former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “The most important thing is to demonstrate that we are in favor of a single and indivisible security, that security is not used against someone, but for everyone,” declared the man who was one of those responsible for the invasion of Ukraine until Vladimir Putin launched a purge of the army in 2024, a year after the failed rebellion of the Wagner mercenary group.

“Without being a military-political alliance, Russian-Chinese relations go beyond this interstate interaction,” Shoigu told the low-level delegation sent by Beijing on Tuesday, led by Chen Wenqing, head of the Central Political Affairs Commission. Shoigu accompanied his guests to a display of drones, Kalashnikov assault rifles, and electronic warfare systems.

Military industry

The Russian military industry is seeking clients at the forum. Rosoboronexport announced the day before that it would present “the latest developments in public and state security.” “All the products we are showing have been tested in real-life conditions,” declared the agency established by the Kremlin to coordinate arms sales to other countries. Its “tests” range from the cities of Syria and Ukraine to guerrilla warfare in the Central African Republic and Myanmar.

One piece of the Russian puzzle on the African continent is precisely the Africa Corps — the Afrikanskiy korpus, in Russian — a state-run mercenary company operating under the control of the Ministry of Defense. This organization is in the process of assimilating the Wagner Group’s structures after its top leadership died in 2023 in a plane crash, behind which many analysts believe was the hand of the Kremlin.

“There are no ideals, everything is driven by money, nothing else,” a Wagner veteran told this newspaper a few months ago while waiting for his new assignment.

The Kremlin is moving its pieces in the Sahel. A month ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov chaired a conference in Moscow with the foreign ministers of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, nations ruled by military juntas and which joined the Alliance of Sahel States in 2023 after withdrawing from ECOWAS, a Western-sponsored bloc.

“Russia is ready not only to strengthen the defense capabilities of the three countries through bilateral channels, but also to facilitate the formation of the alliance’s joint armed forces,” Lavrov proclaimed.

Moscow is sending food supplies to these countries in parallel. According to sources from the Tass news agency, so far this year the Kremlin has supplied 709.5 tons of peas to Burkina Faso, 20,000 tons of wheat to Niger, and 29,400 tons of diesel to the Central African Republic.

Months earlier, in December 2024, two key figures — Deputy Prime Minister and former Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov — toured the region to seal bilateral agreements for the extraction of rare earths and strengthen the deployment of their mercenaries.

Novak discussed lithium exploitation with the leader of Mali’s military junta, Assimi Goita, while Yevkurov negotiated the formation of local troops with the Africa Corps.

After Mali, the Russian delegation visited Burkina Faso, where they discussed sending a military attaché to the head of state, and Niger. Niger’s uranium deposits have become a gold mine for Moscow, following France’s withdrawal.

Russia is also moving its pawns in southeastern Libya. According to several think tanks, including the Jamestown Center, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar handed over control of a new strategic base to Moscow in recent months: the Matan al-Sarra airfield. It was from this position that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi attacked Chad in the 1980s in an attempt to expand his influence in the Sahel.

The Russian think tank Rybar denies this. “We would like to, but the fact is that the bases in the area have already been occupied by the Turks,” asserts this Kremlin-linked organization. “We would be happy to know that our troops have appeared in Chad or another country, but this has not happened. Our leaders do not have a unified African strategy, and we often arrive only by invitation or to replace the Wagner Group.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary company opened a path that the Kremlin is now fully exploiting. Previously, much of the income obtained from the regimes protected by its soldiers went to the company’s coffers, not to the Russian authorities.

“The visit, not only of diplomats and military personnel, but also of economic intermediaries, is an important step in strengthening ties with the sovereign authorities of the Sahel,” Rybar emphasizes. “In the Central African Republic, we saw how our military efforts, separated from the economy, did not produce the desired results.”

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