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Propaganda Machine: Russia’s information offensive in the Sahel
After initially trying to conceal its propaganda operations in Africa, Russia is now putting all its cards on the table. In the Sahel, a veritable laboratory for Russian disinformation campaigns, Moscow’s agents spare no expense in manipulating local public opinion and instrumentalizing the media. Journalists are the first victims of these activities.
(Visual : Mélody Da Fonseca)
- Russia is conducting a disinformation offensive in Africa: a massive, comprehensive operation that forces journalists throughout the countries Moscow is manipulating to censor themselves or risk reprisal.
- Trips to Russia and Ukraine were arranged for Malian journalists in June 2024. Once back in Mali, they began organizing pro-Russia events.
- An organization called African Initiative, which has replaced the teams once led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, sponsors courses at a newly established journalism school in Mali.
By Léa Peruchon
November 21, 2024
They’ve sprouted like desert flowers after the rain. In manifestations, on traffic circles, hanging from motorcycles, or proudly sewn onto boubous, Russian flags are simply everywhere. First appearing on the banks of the Ubangi River in the Central African Republic, these little pennants have moved northwards in the wake of the putsches that have shaken the Sahel in recent years.
They could be found in Mali in 2021, then in Burkina Faso and Niger in 2023. The appearance of Russian flags in these three regimes systematically coincided with their governments’ signings of military cooperation treaties with Moscow. But Russia’s influence extends further, as the Kremlin has taken advantage of the opportunity to deploy its media manipulation operations in each newly partnered country.
Since the coup d’états that toppled the elected governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, the state of the countries’ respective media industries has deteriorated sharply.
“To be a journalist in Niger is to sing the praises of the junta, to keep quiet, and to go into exile so as not to be jailed,” said one journalist, speaking under the condition of anonymity.
Once critical voices were muzzled, the media landscape in these Sahelian countries suddenly transformed: pro-Russian and “anti-imperialist” content now dominates the front pages of newspapers, floods radio airwaves, and saturates social networks.
“We don’t know who’s who anymore”
“Bans on international media and the expulsion of foreign reporters reflect a desire to silence criticism,” said Sadibou Marong, Director of the Sub-Saharan office of Reporters Without Borders (RSF). In a report titled “What It’s Like to Be a Journalist in the Sahel,” published by the organization in 2023, RSF pointed out that these decisions “have created space for media favorable to a pro-Russian narrative, defending the presence of Wagner’s mercenaries in the region and contributing to the spread of disinformation.”
The situation has not improved since. Only a few journalists agreed to talk to us, on the express condition of remaining anonymous.
“The Russians’ presence has changed the way we process information,” said a Nigerien reporter. “Journalists have been bought by the Russians via the junta to spread disinformation.”
A Malian colleague, who specializes in the fight against disinformation, shared that outlook. “We don’t know who’s who in this country anymore,” he said.
In Burkina Faso, another journalist feared for his life. “I now avoid covering subjects that could make me disappear overnight,” he told us.
As journalists have been silenced, numerous Russian proxies have emerged. Their mission: to influence public opinion in furtherance of Moscow’s interests.
“They began signing contracts with artists, activists, and association leaders […] who changed their tunes overnight,” said one journalist.
Forbidden Stories and its ten media partners have investigated the techniques used by today’s agents of Russian influence in the Sahel. Despite the August 2023 death of the mastermind behind these operations, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the propaganda machine he put in place continues to churn. It does so using methods it refined in the Central African Republic beginning in 2018 (read our article on this subject here). From trips to Russia and training courses for African journalists, to Russian cultural centers, the investigation reveals the scale of Moscow’s disinformation and soft power offensive in Africa.
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From Bangui to Saint Petersburg, from Bamako to Mariupol
Since Wagner Group mercenaries arrived in Bangui in 2018, Moscow has created an extensive information ecosystem, even sending their most promising local mouthpieces, like Central African government official Héritier Doneng, on trips to Russia.
Doneng, now Minister of Youth, Sports, and Civic Education, has visited Russia on multiple occasions. In a photo published on his Facebook page in March 2022, he poses, smiling, wrapped in his parka with his feet in the snow. The accompanying caption reads, “Russia…” “I was there!” The image was captured in Saint Petersburg, famous for its architectural wonders and troll factories.
Heritier Doneng in St Petersburg, Russia, in March 2022.
Upon his return, Doneng took the reins of a discrete troll factory in the Central African Republic: the Bureau of Information and Communication. Over the course of several years, the agency enlisted dozens of young people to monitor political opponents and disseminate pro-Russian propaganda on social networks, according to Ludovic Ledo, a former employee interviewed by France 5 television channel in 2022.
A similar modus operandi has since been replicated in Burkina Faso, and the actions of these digital armies have had direct consequences on the ground. In April 2023, two French journalists were expelled from the country following a smear campaign that also targeted three of their Burkinabe colleagues. In Mali, a journalist confided to us that he feared Russia’s online mercenaries, who he said were “paid by the authorities to go on social media and paint you as someone who needs to be struck down.”
Doneng, who didn’t respond to the consortium’s questions, seems to have left the Bureau of Information and Communication. But he’s not the only one to have visited Russia. In recent months, several journalists and bloggers have benefitted from press trips, sometimes to the occupied territories of Ukraine. Malian journalist Robert Dissa, for example, published a travelog on Facebook in July 2024 recounting his journey a month earlier. “We are leaving Moscow for Mariupol. About 1,240 kilometers by road,” he wrote, adding that the Ukrainian city, currently under Russian occupation, “breathes calm.”
The Russian offensive waged between February and May 2022 claimed thousands of lives and devastated Mariupol. Dissa’s statements echo the propaganda of the Russian state.
“Today, two years after Mariupol was reduced to ruins, brand-new buildings are springing up everywhere,” he wrote. “Mariupol is now completely rebuilt, with entire new districts rising from the ground and rejuvenating the city.”
He concluded, “Here, young people are happy to be in Russia, and to be from the great country of Russia.”
Robert Dissa poses in front of the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, during a trip in June 2024. (Source: Facebook)
Once back in Mali, Dissa changed his Facebook profile picture to the logo of his communications agency, “Youri Communication.” Contacted by Forbidden Stories, Dissa explained that his agency was founded in 2018, and its Russian sounding name had nothing to do with his recent trip. But the coincidence didn’t go unnoticed in congratulatory comments under the post. “Youri, kind of like Oleg or Ivan,” one user wrote.
A Russian journalism school in Mali
Dissa claims to have made contact with Russians in Mali “to go and see the war in Ukraine” on his own, without compensation. “They only reimbursed my travel expenses,” he said. In any case, the trip was the starting point of an ever-strengthening collaboration between Mali and Russian disinformation agents.
The summer of 2024 was a particularly busy one for Dissa. A few weeks after returning from Ukraine, on August 24, 2024, he organized the first Russian-Malian Cultural Day, with the theme “love of country.” The event’s greeters were required to wear scarves in the colors of the Russian flag.
Banner for the Russian-Malian Cultural Day event held on August 24, 2024 (Source: Facebook, Robert Dissa)
Greeters at the Russian-Malian Cultural Day co-organized by Robert Dissa on August 24, 2024
(Source: Telegram, La Perspective Sahélienne)
In the venue, Malian ministers were joined by Consul of the Russian Federation Dmitry Vlasov, as well as several political and community leaders. They listened attentively to the opening speech, which was followed by the Russian and Malian national anthems and a demonstration of Russian folk dancing. In an interview with Forbidden Stories, Dissa asserted that he takes advantage of these events “to get the word out about [his] agency, so other clients will come to [him].”
Dissa claims the last thing he wants is to be seen as a mere mouthpiece for Moscow. “Any company, any state that in one way or another wants to intervene in Mali, to contribute to the socio-economic development of my country, if I don’t see anything wrong with it and if it’s in my interest, I can’t think of anything more noble,” he said.
Forbidden Stories was nevertheless able to observe Dissa’s growing penchant for Russia. Three weeks before the first Russian-Malian Cultural Day, on July 30, he inaugurated the Russian School of Journalism in Bamako, which has no physical location and no website. According to him, his Russian partners asked him to find young journalists who might be interested in attending. “I talked about it to people around me and mobilized a few,” he said, who, again, claims not to have received payment for his work.
Forbidden Stories and its partners found the online classes for this school, which does all of its teaching virtually. Eight 20-minute videos are hosted on the Russian site Yandex Disk and have been shared with dozens of young Malians. In them, a blond man with a wardrobe of striped and floral shirts teaches the basics of journalism in French, with a slight Slavic accent. As he discusses journalistic values, fact-checking, and data journalism, among other topics, it seems at first as though the course is nothing out of the ordinary.
But upon closer inspection, it’s clear that journalism is being presented as a fight, and journalists as soldiers. “The internet has been transformed into an alternative battlefield, where war is raged not by regular armies, but by journalists, information campaigners, political technologists, and opinion leaders,” says the man in one of the videos.
Editing of videos from online journalism classes taught by Mikhail Pozdniakov (Source: Yandex Disk)
The fact-checking classes teach students to familiarize themselves with their opponents and to unmask them. “Instead of simply quoting a media outlet that talks about US foreign policy, you can point out that this outlet is financed by the US State Department,” says the instructor, without mentioning that the US State Department does not actually involve itself in editorial aspects of the media it underwrites.
Editorial techniques are taught in the same way. To create a worthy headline, the course says it’s advisable to “include a striking and provocative quote.” The example cited, referencing Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Defense Minister, was no accident: “Macron, get out: The results of Lavrov and Yevkurov’s visits to Françafrique.”
According to the African Initiative website, three of the school’s best students will go on to train in Russia. Upon their return to Mali, they will be able to join the African Initiative news agency as correspondents.
African Initiative: A new weapon of propaganda
It was African Initiative that sponsored the Russian-Malian Cultural Day Dissa organized. Founded in September 2023, African Initiative is the new bridgehead for Russia’s interference in Africa, which aims to enable Moscow, through its intelligence services and disinformation agents, to retake control of the propaganda apparatus constructed by Prigozhin. Though the Russian offensive on the African continent began with scattered clandestine activities, full-scale operations have since coalesced and been centralized.
On its website, the organization explains that it “enables Russians and Africans to get to know each other better” by “objectively and rapidly [informing its] readers and colleagues about what’s happening on the continent.” According to Filip Bryjka and Jedrzej Czerep, researchers at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, African Initiative is now “the main transmission belt of Russia’s (dis)information activities in Africa.”
The agency’s capabilities extend beyond the realm of propaganda. It was the first to break the news, on its Telegram channel, about the arrival of “Russian military specialists” from Africa Corps, a successor of the Wagner Group, in Burkina Faso. One can’t help but be reminded of when Prigozhin’s teams announced the arrival of Wagner’s mercenaries in the Central African Republic.
But Russia’s strategy in Africa has evolved slightly. While Prigozhin’s secret weapon in the Central African Republic, the ‘Lakhta Project’, still exists today, it continues to operate in the shadows. African Initiative’s leaders, on the other hand, openly appear in photos posted on the organization’s Telegram channel.
Mikhail Pozdniakov, for example, is described on the African Initiative website as “the head of the agency’s French editorial team.” Often dressed in a signature patterned shirt, he teaches journalism at Dissa’s online school in Mali. For the past four months, he has also been hosting the first Russian-Malian television program in the country’s history, “Face à Mikhaïl,” according to an article published on African Initiative’s website. The show features discussions about everything from the BRICS – the intergovernmental organization comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – summit in Russia to Russian-Iranian news. It’s co-presented with political analyst Issa Diawara and broadcast via WebTV channel Gandhi Malien TV. Accompanied by the channel’s boss, Mamadou Sidibé, Pozdniakov and Diawara have both traveled to Russia, on a trip reported on the African Initiative website.
In a reply sent to the consortium, Pozdniakov explained that he had left the Russian television channel RT to join African Initiative, which he described as a “great project led by outstanding specialists.”
Other, more familiar faces have also joined the ranks of this new organization, including former members of Prigozhin’s network. Anna Zamaraeva, an ex-spokesperson for Wagner, appears in a photo alongside several young apprentices at the inauguration of the Russian School of Journalism in Mali, and was also photographed in the Moscow offices of African Initiative during Dissa’s trip. More recently, a camera captured her in Equatorial Guinea during a visit to an orphanage, as stated on the African Initiative website.
Anna Zamaraeva with Mikhail Pozdniakov (from right to left) after the inauguration of the journalism school, July 30, 2024 (source: Facebook, Robert Dissa)
A few months ago, Viktor Lukovenko, also once associated with the Wagner Group, was in Burkina Faso, where he claimed on his Telegram channel to have founded a local branch of African Initiative. It appears he has since withdrawn from the organization. This was confirmed by Mikhail Pozdniakov in an exchange with the consortium: “As far as I know, Viktor worked as our representative, then left us to join another project.” The presence of propaganda experts like Zamaraeva and Lukovenko “says a lot about this organization’s members, who are, in reality, information entrepreneurs, probably selling themselves to the highest bidder,” Audinet, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research at the Military School (IRSEM), told to our partner RFI.
However, since Prigozhin’s death, it’s difficult to say who has taken the reins of Russia’s disinformation campaigns. According to an investigation published by The Insider, an independent Russian investigative outlet, Editor-in-Chief of African Initiative Artyom Kureev belongs to the Fifth Service of the FSB, the Russian intelligence department in charge of international operations. Contacted via Pozdniakov, African Initiative initially offered us an interview with Kureev, but then stopped responding to our messages.
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Russian Houses at the forefront of the cultural battle
While it’s difficult to confirm who has control over any given department at African Initiative, or discern who now commands Prigozhin’s former inner circle, Russian foreign cultural policy in Africa, dictated by the Kremlin, is clearer.
Take, for example, the “Russkyi Dom,” or Russian Houses, which are coordinated by the Russian federal cooperation agency Rossotrudnichestvo. Reporting to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Rossotrudnichestvo was placed under sanctions by the European Union for its role in spreading disinformation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to its website, the agency has 87 official branches abroad, not including “non-state” branches, like those set up in partnership with local NGOs. Russian Houses appeared in Mali in June 2022, in Burkina Faso in January 2024, and in Niger in October 2024, and their presence will extend to the Republic of Guinea by the end of the year. According to the Polish researchers Bryjka and Czerep, the expansion of Russia’s network in Africa has accelerated since the death of Wagner’s former boss.
According to an article published on November 15 by the official Russian news agency Sputnik, Rossotrudnichestvo is also considering opening Russian Houses in Côte d’Ivoire. “This reflects a desire to reinforce public and cultural diplomacy,” Audinet told Forbidden Stories. “It symbolizes an intention to put down roots.”
At first glance, the function of the Russian Houses is similar to that of the international centers of Alliances Françaises or the German Goethe-Institut. In Bangui, since the opening of the Russian House in 2021, numerous conferences, evenings and events have been held to promote Russian culture. Created outside any official framework, the Russian House in Bangui is now a partner of the Rossotrudnichestvo. But it is worth noting that it is run by Dmitry Sytyi, a pioneer of the Wagner group. And the activities go beyond traditional cultural promotion.
Recently, Central African children forming the Russian flag with their white, blue and red t-shirts were filmed in front of the esplanade of the Russian House in Bangui. In unison, they wished Vladimir Putin a happy birthday.
Central African children wish Vladimir Putin a happy birthday at an event organized at the Russian House in Bangui on October 7, 2024. (Source: Telegram, Russian House in CAR)
In Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, the Russian Houses are a valuable tool for connecting with local media. In Bamako, for instance, young apprentice journalists visit these cultural centers to learn Russian every Wednesday. In Niger, “just after the dissolution of the country’s press house in January 2024, the Russian House came into being,” said one journalist. “According to some reports, it has since been working with reporters close to the government.” Being a journalist in the Sahel today means either collaborating or remaining silent.
The first targets in Russia’s ongoing information war have been local journalists. “We’re living in the darkest hours of journalism in Burkina Faso,” said a Burkinabe reporter.
Interviewed by our partner Le Monde, another Burkinabe journalist summed up the situation in the Land of Upright Men. “The Russians have succeeded in transforming the media landscape here,” he said. “With their infiltration of groups on social networks and targeting of the regime’s critics, everyone is afraid. No one dares to speak up, even on the phone.”
Thanks to a multitude of public and private actors and entities, Russia is extending its influence across local African populations – or at least, to their leaders. From Prigozhin’s loyal former lieutenants to the more recent African Initiative and the Russian Houses, the Kremlin’s grip on the African continent is growing stronger by the day.
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