Wagner in Africa: How the Russian mercenary group has rebranded

This is the Russian state coming out of the shadows in its Africa policy," says Jack Watling, land warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and one of the report's authors. According to Dr Watling, "there was a meeting in the Kremlin fairly shortly after Prigozhin's mutiny, in which it was decided that Wagner's Africa operations would fall directly under the control of Russian military intelligence, the GRU".