Wagner’s troubled game in support of General Hemedti

2023-04-28 19:59:29

By Tanguy Berthemet

Posted
on 04/28/2023 at 6:41 p.m.
,
Update on 04/28/2023 at 7:59 p.m.

Since 2017, the ties between the Sudanese officer, Hemedti and Wagner’s Russian mercenaries have steadily grown stronger. Ashraf Shazly/AFP

DECRYPTION – While Moscow dresses in neutrality, Wagner is too close to Hemedti to cut ties.

Sudan is sinking into a dirty war between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto president, and his former number two, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”, at the head of the powerful Rapid militia. Support Forces (RSF). The neighboring countries which are witnessing this bloody drama, born simply of the hatred between these two officers, are trying to push for mediation.

In this concert, Russia and the Wagner group play a separate and complex score. “The Russians, like all actors, have extremely contradictory interests”underlines Anne-Laure Mahé, researcher at the London School of Economics.

Russia “officialstands, at least in discourse, equidistant from the two protagonists, and avoids deciding so as not to lose everything. Sudan is, in fact, an important pawn in the reconquest of Africa launched by the Kremlin in recent years.

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