Building influence through war travel and graffiti

Teenage football players listen to the Russian national anthem before a match. Nearby, artists paint a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin on a wall during a graffiti festival.

Welcome to Burkina Faso, one of the African countries where Russia is expanding its activities to gain influence.

Evidence from the BBC shows that Russia is using media and cultural initiatives to attract African journalists, influencers and students, while spreading misleading information.

These events are promoted by African Initiative, a recently formed Russian media organization that defines itself as an information bridge between Russia and Africa. It inherited structures previously set up by the dismantled Wagner mercenary group and is believed by experts to have ties to Russian security services.

African Initiative was founded in September 2023, a month after Wagner's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash. The company welcomed former employees of his disbanded companies.

Efforts are mainly focused on the three military-led countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Following recent coups, these West African countries have distanced themselves from Western allies like France, criticizing their failed interventions against jihadist groups and colonial legacies, and have turned instead to Russia.

In addition to local cultural events, African Initiative maintains a news website with stories in Russian, English, French and Arabic, as well as a video channel and five Telegram channels, one of which has nearly 60,000 subscribers.

Some Telegram channels were recycled from older channels set up by groups affiliated with Wagner. They were the first to promote the Russian Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps paramilitary group, which effectively replaced Wagner’s military wing in West Africa.

Pro-Kremlin narratives and misleading information, especially about the United States, are widespread.

Stories on the African Initiatives website suggest, without evidence, that the US is using Africa as a production and testing ground for biological weapons, building on the Kremlin's long-maligned disinformation campaigns.

One story echoes the Kremlin’s unsubstantiated claims about U.S. biolabs being moved from Ukraine to Africa. Another story claims without evidence that U.S. biolabs are expanding on the continent, alleging that the African continent is becoming a Pentagon testing ground under the guise of research and humanitarian projects, suggesting that secret biological experiments are being conducted there.

While Prigozhin's propaganda efforts were aimed primarily at France, the African Initiative is more focused on Americans, says researcher Jedrzej Czerep, head of the Middle East and Africa Program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. It is much more anti-American.

In June, a group of bloggers and reporters from eight countries were invited on a seven-day press tour of the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. The trip was organized by Russian state media and Western-sanctioned Russian officials, and the journalists visited the headquarters of African Initiatives in Moscow.

“Africa didn't get much information [about the war],” Raymond Agbadi, a Ghanaian blogger and academic who studied in Russia and took part in the press trip, told the BBC. “Whatever information we got, it wasn't convincing enough to understand what the war was really about.

Also present at the visit was American influencer Jackson Hinkle, an outspoken supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has spread several false claims about Ukraine.

After visiting Moscow, the journalists traveled 1,250 km (780 miles) to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region. They then visited cities in the Zaporizhzhia region, all areas captured by Russia early in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

During the visit, the reporters were accompanied by Russian officials and traveled with the Russian military in vehicles bearing the Z sign, the symbol of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In May, African Initiative organised a separate press trip to Russian-occupied Mariupol for a delegation of bloggers from Mali.

Press trips for journalists are a common tool to sell a country's positions. But while Western media outlets provide much progressive training [for journalists] According to Beverly Ochieng, a senior analyst at Control Risks and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russia uses these tours to report on important issues that have become a global concern. They are trying to push certain stories. She points out that China is conducting similar tours.

According to Ms Ochieng, the fact that African journalists report on their travels gives an authentic impression, because they reach the audience in languages ​​they recognise. It does not seem to be part of a broader campaign to portray Russia in a positive light.

In stories published after the trip, the African journalists referred to Ukrainian cities occupied by Russian troops as “conflict zones in Russia” and quoted Russian-installed authorities, echoing Russian state propaganda and the Kremlin’s view of Ukraine’s borders.

In an article published on JoyOnline, an English-language website operated by the Multimedia Group, Ghanaian journalist Ivy Setordjie writes that the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia [whose capital is under Ukrainian control]is located “in the south of European Russia.”

She told the BBC she disagreed that the regions were illegally annexed by Russia, saying her reports reflected her own judgment and were not aimed at the country.

In addition to press trips, local partners of African Initiative in the Sahel region of West Africa are actively involved in community outreach initiatives to boost Russia's image.

The BBC monitors African Initiatives' Telegram channels and Facebook pages, where videos, images and reports of their work on the ground are shared.

In Burkina Faso, we found reports of a football competition where the Russian national anthem was played, friendship lessons in schools where students learned about Russia, a competition in the Soviet martial art of sambo, first aid workshops for civilians and police officers, and a graffiti festival where participants depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin with former Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara, all sponsored by the African Initiative.

The photos also show members of the African Initiative distributing messages to local people and a screening nearby of the Wagner-backed documentary The Tourist, about a group of Wagner instructors in the Central African Republic, where Wagner and his splinter groups have been. assisting the government in its fight against rebels for several years.

The original idea with Africa Corps was to wipe out all the military structures that Prigozhin had developed and replace them with something new. African Initiative, which often functioned as a media wing, was more flexible and happy to reuse all the resources that were already there, says researcher Mr. Czerep of the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

The FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, plays a key role in the new organization, he notes. The head and editor of African Initiative is Artyom Kureyev, identified by Russia experts as an agent of Russia’s Federal Security Service. Mr. Kureyev is linked to the Valdai Club, a Moscow-based think tank close to President Putin.

The African Initiatives website lists Anna Zamaraeva, a former press officer for Wagner, as deputy editor-in-chief.

Viktor Lukovenko, known as one of Prigozhin’s political technologists, set up the African Initiative’s office in Burkina Faso but left the post in recent months. A former Russian nationalist with a criminal past, Mr. Lukovenko spent five years in prison for an attack in Moscow on a Swiss citizen who later died.

We contacted African Initiative for comment. The Moscow office confirmed that it had received our questions but had not responded. We also contacted the Russian government but did not receive a response.

In February, an article was posted on the African Initiatives website in response to a report by the US State Department. It stated that the editorial board emphasizes that the goal is to spread knowledge about Africa in Russia and to popularize Russia in African countries. In this way, different Africans get the chance to be heard, including their criticism of Western countries.

Meanwhile, the organization continues to intensify its outreach in the Sahel. In the last week of August, about 100 students in Burkina Faso attended a lecture on training opportunities in Russia.

“I learned a lot about Russian culture and relations between our governments,” a smiling teenager wearing a T-shirt with the African Initiative logo said in a video recorded after the conversation.