The United States has accused Russian mercenaries of exploiting natural resources in the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and other parts of Africa to help fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine; a charge that Russia rejected as “anti-Russian rage.”
The country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas Greenfield, said that the Wagner mercenary group is exploiting natural resources and “these ill-gotten gains are used to fund the Russian war machine in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine. Make no mistake: people across Africa are paying a heavy price for the Wagner Group’s exploitative practices and human rights abuses,” Thomas Greenfield told a UN Security Council meeting on the financing of armed groups through the illicit trade in natural resources in Africa. Although there has been no reports of such from the listed countries, and no confirmation yet from any source.
Wagner, staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces, fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali and other countries. A Reuters report alleged that the party was established in 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and began supporting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
Countering the accusation, Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzia, declared instead that Thomas Greenfield was rather referring to the “Russian support for African partners. This exposes their real plans and goals – what they really need from African countries,” Nebenzia said, without going into details.
