Simon Marks and Stephanie Baker
Bloomberg, June 27, 2023
“If the relationship between the Russian government and Wagner is broken, it means that their relationship in CAR and Mali is also broken,” said Kessy Martin Ekomo Soignet, who heads Peace and Development Watch, a Bangui-based think tank. “What is happening is destroying the narrative” that the CAR government is being supported by Moscow, and instead shows that “CAR’s president is officially a hostage of Wagner.”
The two men, rifles strapped to their backs, huddle together in the grass. Bright flashes appear in their hands — Molotov cocktails, which they hurl high over a barbed wire fence toward stacked red crates of beer. Plumes of smoke fill the air.
Assailants throw Molotov cocktails over the wall surrounding the brewery. Source: Mocaf brewery
The fire that ensued destroyed some 50,000 beer bottles at a brewery owned by French alcohol giant Castel in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. Officials from two Western governments that have reviewed the closed-circuit footage, obtained by Bloomberg News, believe that the perpetrators belong to the Wagner Group, according to people familiar with the situation.
The notorious Russian paramilitary organization — whose founder Yevgeny Prigozhin had close ties to the Kremlin until last weekend, when he mounted a mutiny against President Vladimir Putin — has committed a wide range of alleged human rights abuses, from grisly murders of civilians in Ukraine, where it has played a key role, to the rape and execution of villagers in CAR and Mali. For more than half a decade, it has been the leading actor in the Kremlin’s efforts to grow its sphere of influence on the continent, gaining friends — along with security-services contracts and lucrative mining licenses — in half a dozen African countries.
Why would Wagner attack a brewery? A different set of images, from 12 miles away, offers an explanation. There, with the help of the Paris-based investigative group All Eyes on Wagner, Bloomberg has identified a brand new brewery. A year ago the land was all open-air and dirt, satellite images show. The warehouse and large metal vats that sit there now produce a new beer called Africa Ti L’Or, which belongs to a company run by a top Wagner official.
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