Abidjan (AFP) – The pivotal role played by Russia’s Africa Corps mercenaries in putting down a mutiny in Niger at the weekend has revealed just how dependent on Moscow the west African country’s ruling junta has become.

The growing reliance on Russian mercenaries is also at odds with the junta’s insistence that its 2023 coup was about reclaiming the nation’s sovereignty and independence from foreign powers, according to analysts.

On Saturday, after a night of intense fighting in the capital Niamey, Niger’s military government asked for – and obtained – the Africa Corps’ help in wresting back control from disgruntled soldiers who had attacked several sensitive sites and hunkered down in a key military base at the airport.

Russia’s ambassador to Niamey, Viktor Voropaev, himself boasted on the same day that the intervention helped “repress a mutiny”.

“The Africa Corps played a decisive role through the provision of ground and air support to help loyalist forces retake Air Base 101, one of the capital’s most strategic sites, from the mutineers and largely eliminated the remaining threat they posed to the government,” Charlie Werb, an analyst at Aldebaran Threat Consultants, told AFP.

Werb argued that the mutiny was the consequence of a worsening security landscape in Niger, with the junta having failed to quell a deadly, long-running jihadist insurgency.

Like its paramilitary predecessor, the Wagner group, the Africa Corps is officially in the Sahel region to help tackle that violence.

But for Lou Osborn, co-founder of the collective All Eyes on Wagner, which tracks the mercenary outfit, “what the Russians are promising above all is this praetorian guard service, to protect the regime – and they are keeping that promise”.

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