Security

Minsk: Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin is back in Russia, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said — though his exact whereabouts remain unclear. The exiled mercenary leader’s return home raises questions about repercussions he might face for bringing Moscow to the brink of civil war and threatening Putin’s rule. On Wednesday, Wagner’s official recruitment channel on Telegram called for its 250,000 subscribers to don the group’s merchandise and gather in St. Petersberg. It’s unclear whether the so-far invulnerable Wagner chief will be there.

Washington: The Pentagon is creating a new office to monitor how employees handle sensitive material, after junior airman Jack Teixiera was charged over posting dozens of classified documents online this year. After an extensive 45-day review, the DoD found that while most people took protocols seriously, it needed better mechanisms to track when and what materials are being printed from servers.

Gulf of Oman: The U.S. Navy stopped Iran from seizing two commercial tanker ships in the Gulf of Oman earlier this week — one, a Marshall Islands-flagged vessel, and the other, a Bahamian-flagged tanker. An Iranian vessel opened fire at the tanker before U.S. forces arrived and intercepted the seizure attempt. According to the Navy, Iran has targeted 20 internationally flagged merchant vessels since 2021.

— Karina

Latvia’s president-elect worries about Wagner ‘refugees’

THE NEWS

The president-elect of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, worries that the arrival of Wagner mercenary force head Yevgeny Prigozhin and his troops in neighboring Belarus poses risks for both countries, he told Semafor in an interview.

“We already have a very tense situation on the Latvian-Belarusian border with migration being used as a hybrid weapon,” he said, referring to Belarus’s practice of pushing refugees from countries to its East across its western borders. “If all of a sudden the mercenaries want to pretend to be refugees or migrants, then of course, it creates a whole new security threat.”

(After the interview was conducted, reports emerged that Prigozhin had apparently returned to Russia in order to collect personal guns and money.)

Rinkēvičs said he had no direct evidence that the mercenaries would seek asylum. “We believe that we need to analyze all kinds of assumptions, including the one that this group can be used just to test the resilience of neighboring countries, test the resilience of NATO.”

But Rinkēvičs said the most immediate threat might be to Belarus itself, where he noted that the police arrested more than 30 Wagner fighters before the disputed 2020 election, accusing them of planning election interference.

“I am a bit surprised that Mr. Lukashenko has allowed some number of well-trained mercenaries, with the head of that company who has proved that he is a bit rogue,” he said. “If Mr Putin is not able to control him fully, then why does Mr. Lukashenko believe that he is able to control him?”

Rinkēvičs, who served as Latvia’s foreign minister since 2011, will be inaugurated as the country’s president Saturday. He spoke to Semafor Wednesday in a conference room in his country’s foreign ministry in Riga in front of display cases holding diplomatic documents from Latvia’s first period of independence before World War II.

His role, and the country’s policy, is focused largely on strengthening the country’s NATO-backed security in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rinkevics warned against underestimating the Russian military.

“We keep in mind that not all Russian military units, especially the Air Force, have been fully deployed in Ukraine,” he said. “There is substantial capability in the Russian military that we need to take seriously.”

“That’s why we are working with NATO allies also to strengthen the presence of NATO troops here in, in the Baltic States, in Poland in the so-called ‘Eastern flank,’” he said.

For Know More, read here.

Mark Cancian is a senior adviser with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former artillery officer and fire support planner in the Marine Corps.

Untangling Wagner’s mining operations in Africa

→ What’s happening? Russia’s Wagner group has a network of businesses, many of which hinge on the extraction of natural resources, in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali. The United States last week imposed sanctions against the Wagner-affiliated companies which it said “engaged in illicit gold dealings to fund the Wagner Group to sustain and expand its armed forces.”

→ What do analysts say? The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank, in a recent report stated that since 2017, Wagner — in coordination with the Russian state — has exchanged paramilitary services in African states for access to lucrative natural resources such as gold, gemstones, oil, natural gas, and timber.

“Its profitable resource exploitation activities have grown in importance in the wake of Western sanctions following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine,” wrote the report’s authors.

→ For example? CSIS looked at the Ndassima gold mine in CAR which it called one of the military group’s most significant gold mining operations. The think tank said Midas Resources, alleged to be a shell company linked to Wagner, has led operations for around three years.

“Wagner and its various shell companies have established relationships — both personal and legal, as in mining concessions — that will likely be difficult to dissolve and replace,” concludes CSIS. “It is uncertain who will control the Wagner network moving forward and how their priorities may alter the current state of activities.

→ What’s next for Wagner in CAR? “It would be difficult for Moscow to remove Wagner from CAR then replicate its success with another entity,” CSIS associate director Catrina Doxsee, one of the report’s authors, told Semafor Africa. “As Russia debates the future of the Wagner Group and [its leader] Yevgeny Prigozhin struggles to retain some portion of his business empire, it seems likely that Moscow will attempt to install new leadership of Wagner in CAR without dismantling the existing operational infrastructure.”

Prigozhin’s exact whereabouts are unknown and it’s unclear whether his fighters will move to Belarus, as previously agreed. Semafor’s Jenna Moon has gathered insights into what we know so far.

— Alexis Awkwagyiram

The number of defense areas NATO and Japan have reportedly agreed to cooperate on, including maintaining and repairing each other’s shipyards and aircraft hangars. The final plan is set to be announced at NATO’s Vilnius summit next week.

— Karina

⋉ ADVANCE: Military diplomacy. China’s defense chief Li Shangfu expressed interest in expanding Beijing’s military cooperation with Moscow — saying that with continued efforts on both sides, their armed forces will “reach a new level.”

⋊ RETREAT: Civilian targets. At least four people were killed and dozens more injured after Russia launched its largest cruise missile attack on Ukraine’s western city of Lviv since the start of the invasion. More than 50 buildings were destroyed but the damage could have been worse — Ukraine said it shot down seven of the 10 cruise missiles sent towards the city.

— Karina

Mary Beth Long, Former U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary

Mary Beth Long, the former Assistant Defense Secretary under U.S. President George W. Bush and ex-Chair of NATO’s High Level Group, was reportedly among a group of former U.S. government officials involved in backchannel negotiations with Russia to lay the groundwork for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, NBC reported.

The “track two” talks, which didn’t include any Ukrainian officials, took place in New York around the same time as a U.N. Security Council session in April. The handful of American officials, which NBC said included Council of Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and Russia expert Thomas Graham, among others, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for hours to discuss possible ways to end the war in a way that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine. It’s unclear whether only one talk took place or if it was part of a string of discussions.

Long has more than a decade of experience as an operations officer for the CIA on terrorism and security issues, where she received several Superior Performance Awards, including in covert action. As head of the International Security Affairs office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Long spearheaded U.S. government policy for the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. At the time, she was also responsible for NATO’s nuclear policy and, more recently, drew on her legal background as Senior Subject Matter Expert for the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

— Karina

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