The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner said on Tuesday that the United States is ready to recognize the military junta responsible for the coup in Niger just to prevent the presence of elements of this organization in the country.
“The United States is recognizing a government, which they did not recognize yesterday, only to avoid meeting the Wagner group in the country,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an audio broadcast on the Telegram channels associated with the organization.
The head of the Wagner group was thus commenting on the visit of the US State Department’s “number two”, Victoria Nuland, to Niger, where she met with several coup leaders on Monday but made no significant progress in the recovery of the constitutional order.
During these talks, Nuland put forward various formulas to restore democratic order in Niger through a “negotiated solution”, but the coup leaders showed little interest, the US president said in a telephone interview with a group of journalists in Washington .
After the meetings, the diplomat stated that “the people who made the decision” about the coup in Niger are well aware of the risks that the Wagner group’s invitation poses to their sovereignty.
Last week, Niger’s ousted president, Mohamen Bazoum, appealed to the United States and other countries to help him restore constitutional order in the country.
In a text published in The Washington Post, Bazoum also stated that “the entire central Sahel region could come under Russian influence, through the Wagner group, whose brazen terrorism was evident in Ukraine”.
In his comments, Prigozhin added that the members of the Wagner group are always “on the side of good and justice.”
“On the side of those who fight for their sovereignty and their interests. You can always call us,” he said.
Prigozhin has previously supported the military insurgency in Niger, although he has not hinted at his possible role in the coup plot.
“What happened in Niger is nothing but the struggle of the Nigerian people against the colonizers,” Prigozhin said in an audio reproduced via Telegram.
Source: DN
