RUTHFULLY YOURS

• Recent documents published by the Dossier Center, an investigative project set up by Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, demonstrate unequivocally that the Wagner Group is funded and run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in turn answers directly to Putin.
• In recent years, the Wagner Group has been particularly busy in the Middle East and North Africa, where it has been deployed to fulfil Putin’s ambition of expanding the Kremlin’s influence in the Middle East, an objective that has been made a great deal easier by US President Joe Biden’s willingness to abandon Washington’s long-established presence in the region.
• Wagner mercenaries played an active role in Russia’s military intervention in Syria during the civil war to save the regime of Bashar Assad from certain defeat, and more recently have been active in Libya and Mali as part of Putin’s drive to expand Moscow’s presence in North Africa.
• Wagner’s involvement in Sudan dates back to 2017, when it was invited to help shore up Bashir’s dictatorship after he visited Putin in Moscow, during which he promised to make the country Russia’s “key to Africa”.
• Since last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports have surfaced of Wagner helping to smuggle significant quantities of gold out of the country to help Putin to avoid international sanctions and fund his war effort. In return Moscow provides the RSF with sophisticated weapons.
• Another vital feature of Wagner’s involvement with the RSF is that it might help Moscow to fulfil its ambitious plan to build a naval base at Port Sudan, a development that would give the Russian Navy access to one of the world’s major trade arteries.
• An agreement to build a base at Port Sudan was originally agreed when Bashir was still in power but has since fallen into abeyance because of the chaos that has seized the country since the dictator’s overthrow. The RSF is now indicating that it will help revive the project if it succeeds in its attempts to seize control of the Sudanese junta, a move that would greatly enhance the potential threat Moscow poses to control of the Suez Canal and the future stability of the Middle East and Africa.
• The conflict in Sudan, therefore, is not merely a struggle between rival military factions for control of the country. It represents a blatant attempt by Moscow to establish a Russian stronghold in the Red Sea, an objective that would not have been possible without Biden’s willingness to abandon Washington’s global leadership.

The dramatic upsurge of violence between warring factions in Sudan is just the latest example of the chaos being caused throughout the world by the Biden administration’s wilful abandonment of its global responsibilities.

It also demonstrates how, in the absence of effective American leadership in world affairs, rogue states like Russia are willing to fill the void to pursue their own nefarious agenda.

For while the primary cause of the latest unrest to afflict the Sudanese capital Khartoum is the result of a long-standing feud between rival factions in the ruling military junta, there can be no mistaking the fact that the malign influence of Russia’s ubiquitous Wagner Group is playing a considerable role in stoking the violence.

At the heart of the unrest, which has seen foreign governments scrambling to launch rescue missions to evacuate stranded citizens, is the bitter rivalry that has developed between the military junta headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a self-contained paramilitary force led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or “Hemedti” as he is popularly known.

The RSF is an offshoot of Sudan’s notorious Janjaweed militia that was responsible for committing acts of genocide during the bloody Darfur conflict at the turn of the century.

It was as a result of these acts of barbarity that President Omar al-Bashir, the former Sudanese dictator, gained the unwelcome distinction of being the first serving head of state to be charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The Janjaweed subsequently became a key element in the formation of the RSF, which played a pivotal role in the military coup that removed Bashir from power in 2019.

The RSF was at the forefront of the brutal repression of the peaceful pro-democracy sit-in that took place in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum following the coup, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people. The RSF was again involved when a power-sharing deal with politicians who had led the protests against Bashir aimed at facilitating the transition towards a democratic government was thwarted by a further coup in October 2021, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 protesters.

The prominent role the RSF has played in keeping the military in power in Khartoum has created tensions, with Hemedti becoming increasingly frustrated at his position as Burhan’s official deputy. Thus, when Burhan last month decided to bring the militia under the control of the Sudanese military, Hemedti responded by launching his own bid to seize control of the junta, sparking the latest round of violence to afflict the country.

The RSF’s ability, moreover, to make its own bid to seize control of the country has been greatly facilitated by the support it has received from the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary militia that Vladimir Putin uses as his own private army.

Recent documents published by the Dossier Center, an investigative project set up by Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, demonstrate unequivocally that the Wagner Group is funded and run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in turn answers directly to Putin.

In recent years, the Wagner Group has been particularly busy in the Middle East and North Africa, where it has been deployed to fulfil Putin’s ambition of expanding the Kremlin’s influence in the Middle East, an objective that has been made a great deal easier by US President Joe Biden’s willingness to abandon Washington’s long-established presence in the region.

Wagner mercenaries played an active role in Russia’s military intervention in Syria during the civil war to save the regime of Bashar Assad from certain defeat, and more recently have been active in Libya and Mali as part of Putin’s drive to expand Moscow’s presence in North Africa.

The mounting evidence of the Wagner Group’s involvement in Sudan, therefore, does not come as a surprise, and its support for the RSF is entirely in keeping with the Kremlin’s commitment to establishing a network of new alliances on the African continent.

Wagner’s involvement in Sudan dates back to 2017, when it was invited to help shore up Bashir’s dictatorship after he visited Putin in Moscow, during which he promised to make the country Russia’s “key to Africa“.

Since then, Wagner is reported to have supplied large quantities of weapons and equipment to Sudan, including military trucks, amphibious vehicles and transport helicopters. There have even been claims that Wagner has supplied the RSF with surface-to-air missiles in its battle to take control of the state from Burhan.

Wagner’s involvement with the RSF also has important economic implications for Moscow. One of the reasons the RSF is in a position to challenge the Sudanese regime is that it derives enormous wealth from its control over the country’s gold industry. Since last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports have surfaced of Wagner helping to smuggle significant quantities of gold out of the country to help Putin to avoid international sanctions and fund his war effort. In return Moscow provides the RSF with sophisticated weapons.

Another vital feature of Wagner’s involvement with the RSF is that it might help Moscow to fulfil its ambitious plan to build a naval base at Port Sudan, a development that would give the Russian Navy access to one of the world’s major trade arteries.

An agreement to build a base at Port Sudan was originally agreed when Bashir was still in power but has since fallen into abeyance because of the chaos that has seized the country since the dictator’s overthrow. The RSF is now indicating that it will help revive the project if it succeeds in its attempts to seize control of the Sudanese junta, a move that would greatly enhance the potential threat Moscow poses to control of the Suez Canal and the future stability of the Middle East and Africa.

The conflict in Sudan, therefore, is not merely a struggle between rival military factions for control of the country. It represents a blatant attempt by Moscow to establish a Russian stronghold in the Red Sea, an objective that would not have been possible without Biden’s willingness to abandon Washington’s global leadership.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph‘s Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.