I think you, and a lot of other posters here in this thread, are overrating Wagner. A country doesn't irrevocably belong to Russia just because there are some Wagner mercenaries on its territory, nor are their governments automatically pure puppets of the Kremlin who will cut all ties with the West as soon as Putin snips his finger.

At the end of the day, these corrupt African regimes need sources of income to stay in power, so just sitting on their uranium and not selling it is not really an option. They need to either continue selling it to France/Europe, or sell it to some other buyer - but that frees up other suppliers on the global market, say Canada or Australia. And unlike oil, uranium is a commodity with rather steady and predictable demand. If there's excess supply of oil on the world market, companies in China or merchants in India can buy it up because storage is easy and consumption (in vehicles or factories) can be ramped up quickly. Neither of these is true for uranium.

I don’t think I am, I’m posting of what is a reflection in western media and the level of influence attributed to them. I fully realize that in reality a few thousand contract soldiers with most not being anywhere close to elite won’t have a huge impact. Most of them are ex Russian military between 30-50, nothing particularly spectacular or Rambo-esque. In most cases they are just ‘outside’ bodyguards or mercenaries doing which ever regime hires them bidding. They’re hired because some of these paranoid generals are afraid of also getting backstabbed. Most if not all the time this doesn’t clash or in some ways actually helps Russian influence so they’re allowed to operate by Russia. I entirely agree with you that this doesn’t automatically make these country Russian puppets what it does is it buys some level of Russian influence in given country. These countries are not Russian puppets, not even close, so if you think I made that point somewhere it’s not my opinion.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 10 2023 09:13am

Thanks for the clarification! I might be seeing ghosts, but the subtext of a lot of posts in this thread seems to be "the entire Sahel is falling, the West is losing all clout in the region; Russia making huge gains".



By the way, the just look at the sheer number of coups and coup attempts happening all the damn time across Africa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts_since_2010

According to this list, there were 53 coups or coup attempts in Africa since 2010, compared with 6 in Asia, 4 in Europe, 1 in Oceania, 1 in North America and 4 in South America.

On 4 July 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE recognized Wagner as a terrorist organization and Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism...

Membership;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_Co-operation_in_Europe#Participating_states

GL ...

Wagner Country

Deluded.

I meant they operate there doofus

How long do you think it will be before you get yourself suspended again?

I give it like a week maybe

Are we allowed to place bets?

Yeah

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=101608717&f=119&p=649847772

This is copium over a now recognized terrorist group. Mercenaries can be eliminated anytime by any country in the link i delivered.
IMHO Wagner is giving ground for countries to proceed military actions without having to officially facing the nation backing it.