"On Wednesday at 2 pm, 100 Russian military specialists arrived in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou (...). A contingent of 300 military personnel total is expected." On January 24, this announcement was made on a Telegram channel called "African Initiative FR," which the investigative collective All Eyes on Wagner has linked to the former private security firm Wagner and the GRU (Russian military intelligence). The post included a series of photos showing Caucasian men in military garb, their faces hidden behind neckerchiefs, in front of an Ilyushin IL-76 (a Russian transport plane) on the runway of an airport presented as Ouagadougou's.
"Satellite images confirm that the Ilyushin visible in these images landed in the Burkinabe capital [on Wednesday]. This therefore confirms the arrival of multiple Africa Corps soldiers in the country," said Benjamin Pittet, an open-source data analyst. Africa Corps is the new label for Russia's paramilitary presence in the Sahel region, tasked with taking over Wagner's activities in Africa, as well as its staff, after Yevgeny Prigozhin's death at the end of August 2023.
On Wednesday, Africa Corps also announced, on its Telegram channel ("The African Corps"), the arrival of a "Russian contingent of 100 people" in Ouagadougou, with the mission of "ensur[ing] the safety of the country's leader Ibrahim Traoré and the Burkinese people from terrorist attacks."
The junta led by Traoré, who came to power in a coup d'état in September 2022, has not confirmed the information. However, a witness told Le Monde that, on Wednesday at noon, a convoy of several vehicles, similar to those shown in the photos released by the African Initiative, was driving near the military airbase next to Ouagadougou's airport, under the escort of the Burkina Faso armed forces.
At around 4 pm, the arrival of these individuals in Burkina Faso was once again announced on Grey Zone, another Telegram channel close to Russia, via a photo showing two white men holding the emblematic Wagner flag – black, with a red-and-white insignia featuring a skull and crossbones and the group's name – in front of an import-export business called "PMC Petit Moins Cher."
One of them, whose face is blurred, is wearing a khaki T-shirt bearing the faces of former revolutionary president Thomas Sankara (assassinated in 1987) and Traoré. A simple search on Google Maps and Facebook confirms that the business where the photo was taken is located right in the heart of Ouagadougou, a stone's throw from the Primature, the official building in which Traoré has taken up residence since his installation in the presidential armchair.
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