Exporting Autocracy: Evgenii Prigozhin, the Wagner Group and the Putin Regime’s Scramble for Africa

This thesis examines the political impact of Evgenii Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch notorious for his ownership of trolling factories and the Wagner Group mercenaries. On the basis of a detailed analysis of his operations in six African countries, it seeks to demonstrate that Prigozhin is engaged in a form of autocracy promotion. This venture has taken three forms. First, Prigozhin’s apparatus has provided military and propaganda services for embattled autocrats. Second, he has backed authoritarian anti-government forces that resist international peacekeeping and democratisation efforts. Third, he has provided democratically elected leaders and election candidates with techniques of political manipulation that represent a threat to the integrity of democratic processes. 

The argument of this thesis is founded on a functionalist understanding of democracy promotion. It shows that the effectiveness of Prigozhin’s structures as instruments of autocracy promotion derives from their origins in Russia’s autocratisation under Putin. In the process, it challenges intentionalist understandings of autocracy promotion, which treat the phenomenon as a mirror-image of democracy promotion. According to intentionalists, autocracy promotion requires a clear commitment to promote autocracy. As this thesis demonstrates, the problem with this approach is that authoritarian states like the Putin regime are opaque and rely on misinformation. 

In the case of Prigozhin’s conduct in Africa, official declarations are far less illuminating than the facts of the operations of Wagner Group and its associated structures. Using OSINT sources and leaked internal documents, this thesis shows how Prigozhin’s mercenaries and information warriors promoted autocracy, their own business interests, and Russian foreign policy. Far from being contradictory, these goals reflected the nature of the Putin system, where authoritarianism, kleptocracy and anti-Westernism were mutually reinforcing.