RUSSIAN WORLD Russian Africa seen from Khartoum

Agreements for a base in the Red Sea, arms supplies to both sides, Wagner group business: in the war in Sudan, Moscow consolidates its penetration of the continent. Which also has the face of Metropolitan Leonid, “Kirill’s cook”.

As the spring thaw and the fateful celebrations of the May of Victory approach, the expectation for the final solution of the conflict in Ukraine takes on more and more the characteristics of a fan at the big sports championships. Offensive and counteroffensive that resemble the semifinals and finals of a cup, together with commercial negotiations for the new acquisitions of the two teams, missiles and tanks from countries where war is a centuries-old tradition. And while the anxiety of the fans becomes more and more feverish between Kiev, Moscow and Bakhmut, attention is diverted to other events of intense dramatic charge, in other latitudes but always related to “war sports”: the civil war in Sudan , where the Russian team is also all the rage, excluded from all the championships and Olympics but obviously capable of finding many other playing fields for itself on the international stage.

The Russian national war team is reproduced in the multiple variants of the Wagner group, the team that is capable of exhibiting itself on all continents and aspires, with its cook-coach Prigozhin, to the title of world champion in the fraternal fight between East and West, but also between the north and the south of the world. Assembled with elements from all criminal species, the Wagner draws inspiration from the mythical bands of the Don Cossacks, progenitors of all Ukrainian conflicts. The mercenary sport has become so entrenched in Russia that a new ČVK (Častnaja voennaja kompanija, “Private War Company”) is born every week, some regional or republican in formation; others, financed by public or private companies, to the point that Wagner does not have to fight only against the external enemy, but sometimes shoots at imitators who try to wrest territorial and informational leadership from him.

The first news about the Wagner group even predates the “hybrid” conflict with Ukraine in 2014; That same year, the second civil war had also broken out in Libya, where rival governments and gangs had already been at odds since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011. The Russians saw in this circumstance an excellent opportunity to join the Mediterranean games, an old passion of the imperial and Bolshevik armies, but also an excellent field to train their teams of raiders and a good pretext to recover, at least in part, that Africa so loved by the Soviets and that later ended up in the hands of the Chinese.

In the last week, the fury of the conflicts in Sudan has already caused half a million deaths, terrorizing the population and the foreign communities living in their territory, who are now fleeing in disarray with any means at their disposal. Between the generals of the Sudanese regular armies and the “Rapid Support Forces” (RSF) who do not want to submit to the army, the bloody banquet seems to correspond perfectly to the appetites of the Kremlin cook. The evacuation of Western diplomats from Khartoum is leaving a vacuum into which Russia is eager to treat all countries to the specialties of the “Russian world”, as Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto has already observed.

What are Russia’s real interests in Sudan? Just two months ago, the local military agreed to build a base for the Russian fleet in the Red Sea, a crucial junction where many routes converge and which can accommodate four large warships and nearly three hundred soldiers from all Forces. Control of the Suez Canal and the opening to the Indian Ocean would make it in a way a “Russian sea”. So it’s not just an African enclave, but one of the best opportunities to truly become a global superpower again. In return, the Russians have promised to supply Sudan with weapons and military technology, as evidenced by negotiations in Moscow held by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a Sudanese general and politician from the Mehriya tribe of Darfur, vice-chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council. after the 2019 coup and member of the Civil-Military Transition Sovereignty Council.

Dagalo is precisely leading the opposition of the Rapid Support Forces to the national army today and, to give him his support, on February 9 Foreign Minister Lavrov traveled to Sudan and returned the visit. On the other hand, as the New York Times states, the general had flown to Moscow with a plane overflowing with gold bars, thus also satisfying Russia’s hunger for alternative resources in these times of sanctions. And the gold mines in Sudan are another reason, no less, to get involved in the conflict. It is precisely here that the figure of Prigozhin takes shape.

The founder of Wagner had already reached an agreement a few years ago for the exploitation of the deposits in Sudan, which would be entrusted to his company “M Invest”. This was later affected by US sanctions, which is why the gold operations were taken over directly by Wagner, officially in charge of “surveillance” of the mines. According to the Russian political scientist and Africanist Andrej Rudyk, interviewed by Currenttime, Dagalo’s visit to Moscow precisely at the most violent phase of the conflict in Ukraine “demonstrates the breadth of the Kremlin’s military and paramilitary plans”, which in any case is not limited to to support the RSF, but also maintains relations for military supplies with opponents of the Transitional Sovereignty Council headed by Abdel Fattah Burhan, who in the past has already been given combat planes and helicopters. Neither the United States nor France nor any other actor on the international scene is capable of controlling, much less limiting, Russia’s large war market in Sudan and several other African countries.

In addition to precious minerals, Russia also benefits politically, adding favorable or neutral votes from African countries in the UN assemblies where it currently holds the presidency of the Security Council, thus weakening the “western” front and demonstrating the centrality of Moscow. in a “multipolar” vision of the world. In addition, according to recent data, 24% of imports of cereals and 20% of hydrocarbons in all of Africa – whose population is gradually approaching one and a half billion inhabitants – come from the Russian Federation, starting with Algeria, one of the most “friendly” countries with the Kremlin. And as a backdrop, naturally, the shadows of the confrontation with the “big brother of Beijing”, which has inherited a large part of the Soviet business on the dark continent, are looming.

Finally, Russian interest in Africa has also acquired the solemn and “metaphysical” character of religion in the last couple of years, with the creation of the African Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate, headed by Metropolitan Leonid. Born in Stavropol (near the current war zones), 55 years ago, with the name of Leonid Gorbachev (he is one of the few who retain his civil name in the monastic office), he also has the title of “patriarch of all Africas”, adding to the exarchal position the diocese of Klin, in the Moscow province, where he celebrates in the church of All Saints in Kulishki, seat of the African exarchate. Before the fall of the USSR he served in the Red Army and retired with the rank of major to dedicate himself to church life, as did many Soviet soldiers left jobless and homeless.

Leonid had the advantage of not having a family to look after and dedicated himself to the spiritual fusion of the Church and the Army, becoming in 1997 one of the founders of the Synodal Department for collaboration between the two institutions that guard the patriotic spirit, in what some call the “Atomic Orthodoxy”. Since then he has dedicated himself above all to developing his ministry as a chaplain and spiritual leader of the Army, first in the UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina and later in various other areas. Later he was appointed head of the Russian mission in Jerusalem, patriarchal delegate for Armenia, Russian bishop for Argentina and Latin America and representative of the Russian Church in Cairo before the Greek patriarchate of Alexandria, which he himself has now supplanted because he was accused of “schismatic” for his support for Ukrainian autocephaly. Not to miss anything, Leonid also chairs the Patriarchal Commission for dialogue with the Malankar Church of India.

At this time, the Russian exarchate in Africa continuously incorporates new sees and parishes, spread over two large dioceses in the North (31 countries) and in the South of the continent (23 countries), with more than a hundred African priests already incorporated and “re-educated”. in the structures of the Moscow Patriarchate. Leonid’s warlike-spiritual skills allow the Church to combine perfectly with Wagner’s tactics, to the point that many compare his figure with that of Prigozhin himself and have earned him the title of “Kirill’s cook”. On the other hand, in Argentina he had also founded his own company, not military but welfare, “MORAL” (Russian Orthodox Patrons in Latin America), which was accused of participating in drug trafficking when they found a suitcase with almost 400 kg of cocaine at the Russian embassy school in Buenos Aires, after which Leonid was transferred elsewhere.

Currently, the financing of the Russian-African dioceses depends on their initiatives as Orthodox “patrons” and, as Leonid affirms, on the generous support of “men of faith who are not indifferent to the destiny of the Church”, without up to now having mentioned no specific names of these sponsors. A few suitcases of Sudanese gold ingots can certainly help the military and pastoral conquest of Africa, and draw the attention of African priests and faithful – and the whole world – to the only “authentic” universal Orthodoxy: the Kremlin patriarchate.

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