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Chapter 59: Wagner V: The Kingmaker: How Wagner Captured a State

The man who truly ran the Central African Republic was not its president. The real power, the final authority in a nation drowning in blood and poverty, resided in a heavyset, balding Russian named Valery Zakharov. In the stifling, humid capital of Bangui, he held the bland and respectable title of "National Security Advisor" to President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. But to the few remaining independent journalists, terrified civil servants, and besieged Western diplomats in the country, he was known simply, and with a shudder of fear, as the Viceroy.

Jean-Pierre, an idealistic senior civil servant in the Ministry of Mines, a man who had foolishly believed in the promise of his nation's independence, had watched this hostile takeover unfold from the inside with a growing, impotent sense of horror. He remembered Zakharov's arrival in late 2018. It was part of the initial deal, the devil's bargain: in exchange for a few hundred Wagner "military instructors" to bolster the weak national army against the tide of rebel groups, President Touadéra had agreed to take on a Russian advisor. Jean-Pierre, like many in the government, had been initially hopeful.

But Zakharov was not a diplomat. He was an ex-intelligence operative from St. Petersburg, a man whose professional history was a blank slate but whose entire demeanor radiated a thuggish, confident menace. He spoke no French and moved through the presidential palace with the swagger of an owner, not a guest. His first move was to "restructure" the presidential guard, pushing out loyal officers and replacing them with soldiers trained by, and whose loyalty was solely to, Wagner. Within months, Jean-Pierre realized the terrifying truth. The President of the Central African Republic had become a prisoner in his own palace, a hostage whose physical survival now depended entirely on his Russian protectors.

With security assured, the Viceroy moved on to the economy. Jean-Pierre watched in impotent fury as Zakharov, a man with no expertise in geology or finance, personally rewrote the nation's entire mining code. Sitting in on the committee meetings, he witnessed Zakharov dismiss the concerns of the C.A.R.'s own geologists and lawyers, pushing through opaque, duty-free concessions for the country's richest gold and diamond mines. The beneficiary was a newly formed, entirely unknown Russian company called Lobaye Invest, a firm Jean-Pierre's own back-channel research quickly identified as a front for Yevgeny Prigozhin. The nation's wealth was being systematically and "legally" looted, the contracts signed away by a president who no longer had a choice.

The final act was the complete consolidation of political and social control. He saw the Viceroy's operatives set up a new radio station, Lengo Songo, and a glossy newspaper, the Feuille du Tisserand. Jean-Pierre would pick up the paper and see crude, racist cartoons depicting the French ambassador as a giant spider sucking the nation's blood. The radio broadcast a relentless stream of pro-Touadéra, anti-French propaganda, casting the president as the nation's heroic savior and Russia as its only true and selfless friend.

The horror deepened. Horrifying reports trickled into his ministry from the provinces—villages near the new Russian mines razed to the ground, civilians massacred by Wagner troops under the pretext of fighting rebels. Terror was being used as a tool to secure the mining permits. Finally, Zakharov orchestrated the great political charade: a "constitutional referendum," a sham vote designed to remove presidential term limits and allow Touadéra to rule for life. Wagner provided the security, the logistics, and the propaganda.

Jean-Pierre's final, soul-crushing moment of clarity came in a cabinet meeting. The President was speaking about the glorious future of Russian-C.A.R. partnership, his words a hollow echo of the propaganda from the Russian-owned radio station. Jean-Pierre looked across the polished table and saw his president, once a leader, now a willing, smiling hostage. He was a puppet who had come to love his strings. He looked at Valery Zakharov, sitting silently in the corner, a satisfied smirk on his face. The Viceroy. The Kingmaker. The Owner. Jean-Pierre realized the terrible truth. His country hadn't signed a security partnership. It had been the victim of a hostile corporate takeover, a silent, blood-soaked coup that had been ratified by its own leader. His nation was now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Wagner Group.

The Discourse 59: A Blueprint for State Capture

59.1 The Apotheosis of the Wagner Model
The Central African Republic (C.A.R.) represents the horrifying apotheosis, the final and purest expression, of the Wagner business model. It is the definitive case study where the group went beyond simple mercenarism—providing guns for hire in a limited theater, as in Syria—and achieved a far more insidious and permanent goal: near-total "state capture." This model, prototyped in Donbas, refined in Syria, and perfected in the C.A.R., provided a replicable blueprint for Russia's neocolonial expansion across Africa. It is a comprehensive strategy for a hostile takeover, built upon four interconnected pillars designed to gain holistic control of a nation's security, its economy, its politics, and its culture, thereby transforming a fragile state into a captured, pliant, and highly profitable Russian asset. See [citation 1].

59.2 Pillar I: Seizure of the Security Apparatus
Wagner's first and most critical step was to make the President, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, completely and irrevocably dependent on them for his physical survival. This was achieved by systematically penetrating, subverting, and ultimately seizing control of his personal security apparatus. Wagner operatives, initially brought in as "instructors" for the national army (FACA), quickly took over the training and command of the elite units tasked with protecting the President. Within a short period, they had effectively replaced the Central African praetorian guard with their own men or with local soldiers whose loyalty and paychecks came from them, not the C.A.R. state. As documented in numerous reports by the UN Panel of Experts, the Presidential Guard became a Wagner-controlled entity. See [citation 2]. With the President a virtual hostage, protected only by Russian guns, Wagner was free to dictate terms, secure in the knowledge that their client had no alternative and could not move against them without risking his own life. This manufactured dependency is the absolute foundation of the state capture model.

59.3 Pillar II: Plunder of the Economy
With security control established, Wagner, under the direction of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his key "viceroy," Valery Zakharov, moved to seize control of the nation's economy. The primary instrument of this plunder was a Russian company named Lobaye Invest, a sanctioned entity identified by the US Treasury and other international bodies as a direct Prigozhin front company. See [citation 3]. This company was granted exclusive, opaque, and often duty-free mining licenses—without any public tender—for some of the country's most valuable gold and diamond mines, most notably the massive Ndassima gold mine. Beyond the direct plunder of mineral wealth, Wagner operatives took effective control of key customs offices at the country's borders and airport. This allowed their front companies to import heavy mining equipment and military hardware tax-free, while smuggling vast quantities of gold, diamonds, timber (through a company called Bois Rouge), and coffee out of the country without paying taxes. See [citation 4]. This systematic looting served two purposes: it generated immense wealth for Prigozhin and his Kremlin patrons, and it intentionally starved the legitimate C.A.R. state of the revenue it needed to function, thus deepening its dependency on Russia for its very survival.

59.4 Pillar III: Subversion of Politics and Information
The third pillar was the total takeover of the country's political and information landscape. A key figure in this was the Russian political strategist and ex-intelligence operative Valery Zakharov, who was installed as the President's National Security Advisor. Zakharov and his team of Russian "politruks" (political technologists) effectively became a shadow government. They ran sophisticated propaganda outlets like the radio station Lengo Songo, which broadcast a steady stream of virulently anti-French, anti-UN, and pro-Touadéra content. They orchestrated intimidation campaigns against opposition leaders and journalists. Most significantly, they were the architects of the controversial 2023 constitutional referendum, a sham vote plagued by irregularities which abolished presidential term limits, allowing their client, President Touadéra, to rule indefinitely. Wagner provided not just the propaganda for this "constitutional coup," but the security and logistics for the fraudulent vote itself. See [citation 5].

59.5 Pillar IV: Cultural Domination
The final pillar of capture was a campaign of cultural and social domination, designed to supplant the influence of the former colonial power, France, and embed Russia in the fabric of the nation. This "soft power" campaign included funding local cultural events, including a "Miss C.A.R." beauty pageant whose winner was awarded a trip to Moscow. Wagner established Russian language and cultural centers in the capital, Bangui. Most audaciously, they financed and produced a feature-length action film, "The Tourist", a slick piece of propaganda filmed on location that glorifies the Wagner mercenaries as heroic saviors fighting alongside the C.A.R. army. This comprehensive subversion of the democratic process, the economy, and the culture ensures that Russia's control over its captured state would be permanent. The C.A.R. had become Russia's first wholly-owned subsidiary, a colonial prototype for the 21st century.