Wagner group's secret plot: Targeting Africa's oil giants
In 2021, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group planned attacks on infrastructure in Africa, including pipelines belonging to the American oil company Chevron. This information was revealed by the Ukrainian broadcaster Channel 24, which accessed internal correspondence from the Concord Group, co-owned by the now-deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.
According to Channel 24, the mercenaries were to collaborate with African terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda. The hacked correspondence contained emails from relatives of Russian mercenaries who died in Ukraine and from parents asking Prigozhin to employ their sons.
One of the authors of these emails was Igor Smirnov, a former Russian intelligence officer. In the correspondence, he suggested that he worked for oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In March 2021, Smirnov warned the Concord Group that, to his knowledge, retired Russian officers were planning to participate in attacks on foreign infrastructure facilities in West Africa.
Smirnov claimed that Russians were contacting armed groups in West Africa, including Ansaru, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria, to attack Western oil companies in the Niger Delta. He alleged that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was to take responsibility for these attacks. Smirnov assured that he had video and audio evidence of Wagner Group mercenaries' involvement in preparations for these attacks.
"All of this will soon fall upon your company, which destabilizes the situation in West Africa, collaborates with terrorists, and wages an indirect war with the West," Smirnov warned.
Threatened Americans
In another email, Smirnov accused the Wagner Group of extorting money from Chevron in exchange for the inviolability of pipelines in Nigeria. He included a video allegedly showing Andrey Troshev, a close associate of Prigozhin, meeting with warlord Asari Dokubo, the commander of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, was for years a trusted figure of Putin's, earning the nickname of his "personal chef." Their relationship ended in June 2023 when Prigozhin staged a rebellion against the Russian military command. He died two months later in a plane crash, which many attribute to Putin.
