On his Telegram channel Smile & Wave, which has 9,500 followers, Viktor Lukovenko is more discreet about his intentions than his destinations. At the beginning of March, the 39-year-old Uzbek, a former agent in the propaganda network set up by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group who died in August 2023, presented himself on social media as a tourist and blogger, moving from one museum to another in Senegal, after visiting Burkina Faso and Niger at the end of February.
Since the death of Wagner's leader and the dismantling of his group, Lukovenko has continued to travel across the African continent, with a preference for politically unstable states. He does so in the name of a new organization, African Initiative, created in Moscow in September 2023.
On its website, African Initiative describes itself as a "Russian news agency about events on the African continent," with a particular focus on "the neo-colonial legacy that African countries have been struggling with for decades," as well as on the "activities" of Russian "military, businessmen, doctors, and journalists" in Africa.
With its correspondent based in Niger and offices in Burkina Faso and Mali – three Sahel countries governed by putschists who, after ousting France, have continually sought to strengthen their military and economic cooperation with Russia – the agency is positioning itself as the new bridgehead for Russian propaganda in Africa. Its objective, set as one of Moscow's priorities on the continent after the death of Prigozhin, is to enable the Russian state, through its intelligence services and agents of influence, to regain control of the propaganda apparatus built up by Wagner's leader.
Like the myriad structures responsible for spreading Russian informational influence as part of Wagner's Lakhta project, African Initiative has been accused by the US State Department of spreading "disinformation regarding the United States and European countries," with the help of Russian intelligence services.
FSB membership
In its statement, published on February 12, the US State Department pointed out that one of the African Initiative's first campaigns was to spread conspiracies "about Western pharmaceutical corporations, health-focused philanthropic efforts, and the spread of disease in West and East Africa." A throwback to Soviet propaganda: In the early 1980s, the KGB tried to make people believe that AIDS was an American invention.
According to an investigation published by Russia-focused media outlet The Insider on January 29, Artyom Kureev, the editor-in-chief of African Initiative, is said to belong to the fifth service of the FSB, the department in charge of international operations within the Russian security services. "I've been a public figure for a long time (...) and the director of African Initiative. This requires a lot of time and energy. How could I work for an intelligence service at the same time?" he replied by email to Le Monde, before denying that his site was a spreader of "fake news."
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