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By Dotun Olayemi
For nearly a decade, a shadowy Russian army known as the Wagner Group carved a bloody path across Africa, fighting rebels, protecting dictators, and digging up gold. But when the group’s flamboyant leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a mysterious plane crash in 2023, the future of Russia’s African empire seemed uncertain. It was not. In fact, it simply got smarter, quieter, and much harder to catch.
An international consortium of journalists including Forbidden Stories, All Eyes on Wagner, Dossier Center, iStories, and openDemocracy, has obtained 1,431 pages of internal documents from “The Company,” the secretive engine behind Russia’s African influence. These blueprints, budgets, and emails reveal a stunning transfer of power. Following Prigozhin’s death, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (the SVR) did not abandon the operation. They swallowed it whole.
What emerges from the documents is the most extensive covert campaign in the Global South. It is a machine designed not to fight with bullets, but with lies, cash, and fake websites. This is the anatomy of a modern deception.
To understand how Russia operates in Africa today, you must forget the image of rough mercenaries in the back of pickup trucks. The new battlefield is in boardrooms and social media feeds. The new general is not a soldier, but a tennis player.
Meet Dmitry Faddeev. He is 74 years old and a high-ranking general in the SVR. When he isn’t playing tennis at an exclusive club reserved for Russian spies in Moscow, he is plotting the future of Africa. According to our sources, Faddeev is the godfather of the operation. He was the bridge between Prigozhin’s thugs and the Kremlin’s spies. After the mercenary boss died, Faddeev personally oversaw the “takeover” of a specific tool; Africa Politology.
You have probably never heard of Africa Politology. That is by design. On the surface, it looks like a harmless think tank, a group of academics and analysts writing reports. In reality, it is the SVR’s influence arm. It is the engine that creates chaos to order.
The day-to-day handler on the ground is another spy, Ilya Savelyev. He used to work at the Russian Embassy in NATO and as a Consul in India. Now, he manages the finances and logistics of the deception machine from an office in St. Petersburg.
How does a state spy agency pay for a secret war without leaving a trail of receipts? The leaked documents provide the answer, a shell game involving a fake company and a ghost.
The SVR needed to feed money to Africa Politology, but they could not write a check from the Russian Treasury. So, they used a small firm named JSC Inter. On paper, JSC Inter is a tiny consulting firm. It made only about $87,000 in profit last year. It is so small that it qualifies for a “simplified” tax regime. But according to the documents, JSC Inter is the piggy bank.
The money flows from the SVR into Intertechtrade LLC. On paper, this company sells computers. In reality, its director, Alexander Prokhorov, is a ghost. He has no travel history, no digital footprint, and his phone number was registered just months before the contract was signed. Investigators believe he is a fictitious identity, a person who does not exist.
Intertechtrade sends cash to JSC Inter. Because the amounts are kept under strict limits (under $3.3 million per year), the transactions avoid automatic bank scrutiny. Once the cash is received, Africa Politology operatives pick it up physically. They pay their spies and their media trolls in cash. This is the “untraceable layer.” If a foreign government catches on, the SVR simply closes Intertechtrade. The ghost disappears. The spy agency walks away clean.
So, who are the people running this machine from a charming stone office near Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg?
The documents name Sergey Mashkevich as the head of Africa Politology. He is a veteran of Prigozhin’s “galaxy.” His deputy is Artem Gorny, who ordered the moving truck to bring the files to the new secret headquarters in February 2024.
But the most fascinating figure is Maxim Shugaley. He is a sociologist turned political brawler. In the past, he was arrested in Libya for espionage and spent months in a cell. Did that stop him? No. According to the documents, in 2024 he was back in Chad, working inside the presidential campaign of the transitional government.
Shugaley runs the “Foundation for the Protection of National Values.” In reality, his team’s job is to destroy political rivals. In Chad, according to operational briefings, the goal was to “exacerbate the political rivalry” between the president and his prime minister, to “destroy the tandem.” When local authorities caught on, Shugaley and his colleague Samer Sueifan were arrested again. They were released, but the cycle continues. They are expendable assets.
The internal documents are not just about spies; they are about software. The SVR has given Africa Politology a complete “toolbox” to reshape reality. Here is how they do it:
1. The Fake Website: Imagine you are a journalist in Angola. You want to read about the “Lobito Corridor” a real, strategic railway funded by the US and Europe to transport minerals. You type the address into your browser. But you misspell it by one letter. Instead of the real site, you land on a clone made by Africa Politology. The clone looks identical, but the news articles are fake, designed to make you hate the Western project. The documents show they registered this fake domain specifically to confuse locals.
2. The Zombie Accounts: In August 2024, Ksenia Soboleva, the head of the Media Department, needed an army. She sent a message to a service provider: “Create accounts with these names right away.” She listed names: Aminata Djerma, Mariam Barka, Oumar Koudou. These are fake people. These Facebook profiles post pro-Russian comments, attack local activists, and create the illusion that everyone supports the Kremlin.
3. The Paid Rallies: Democracy looks messy. So, Russia pays for it. In June 2024, Africa Politology organized a rally in Mali to support the military junta joining the BRICS bloc. They boasted that over 1,000 people attended. The budget sheets include a line item called “picket events” which is code for paying people to hold signs.
For all its sophistication, the machine is not perfect. The documents reveal struggles. Russia signs many “Memorandums of Understanding” in Africa, but they rarely turn into actual factories or jobs. In Bolivia, a campaign to influence the president failed so badly that the president ended up in prison in 2025, and the entire Russian team was demobilized and sent home.
Furthermore, the operatives are not safe. In August 2025, two other Africa Politology members, Lev Lakshtanov and Igor Ratchin, were arrested in Angola. The government accused them of “financing terrorism.” Their apartment was raided; they found SIM cards, electronics, and stacks of cash.
When they get caught, the Russian government often denies they exist. Under Prigozhin, they were deniable. Under the SVR, they are still deniable. They are ghosts with passports.
The death of Evgeny Prigozhin did not end Russia’s war in Africa. It professionalized it. The Wagner Group’s brutality has been replaced by the SVR’s cunning. The mercenary has been replaced by the spy with a fake company and a Facebook bot farm.
The documents show that Russia is playing the long game. They are lobbying for “foreign agent” laws in Mali and Burkina Faso to silence critics. They are drafting defense treaties between countries. They are trying to lock the West out of Africa’s resources not with tanks, but with disinformation.
•Dotun Olayemi, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos, Nigeria
