Ahead of the second Russia-Africa summit in Moscow this July, Vladimir Putin struck the vapid anti-imperial pose he has often adopted since invading Ukraine. “We are sure that a new multipolar world order . . . will be more just and democratic,” he said. “Africa . . . will take its worthy place in it and finally free itself from the bitter legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism.”

Also at the meeting was one prominent architect of neocolonialism: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, making his first public appearance in the two months between his coup attempt this June and his death in a plane crash this August. Over the past five years, Prigozhin has deployed an estimated 5,000 mercenaries in Africa. Based mainly in the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Mali, Sudan, and Mozambique, Wagner operatives promise security to the embattled leaders of Africa’s poorest and most unstable countries — but their real objective has seemingly been to build a multibillion-dollar resource extraction business, which now controls diamonds, timber, oil, and gold across the continent.

Take, for example, the Ndassima mine in CAR, which sits atop a gold deposit worth $2.8 billion. Wagner secured the rights from President Faustin-Archange Touadéra as in-kind payment for aid in the civil war that has ravaged the country since 2012, nearly confining the government to the capital. In its mercenary capacity, Wagner reclaimed territory for Touadéra and massacred both rebels and civilians. Yet in its business capacity, it has actually paid former rebels to help expand the Ndassima gold mine, which now employs 300 locals, imports industrial equipment from Russia, and exports its products using a fleet of 15 planes.