In Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, stands a curious monument. Heroic soldiers bravely shield a vulnerable woman and child behind them, pointing their guns at unseen enemies straight ahead.

At first glance, one might think the monument dates from the C.A.R.’s time as a French colony. It certainly looks like a colonial relic. But the monument, unveiled in 2021, depicts Russians.

In 2018, the Central African Republic invited the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization now infamous for its 2023 attempted mutiny against Moscow and subsequent merger into the Russian armed forces. For years now, the C.A.R. has become one of the more overt Russian missions in Africa.

But it is far from the only one. Sometimes clandestinely, sometimes openly, Russia has been building an African proxy empire for years. President Vladimir Putin hasn’t built this only by force of conquest; often, his men are welcomed with open arms. Putin has arguably become the most influential player in the world’s second-largest continent.

How did this happen?

Blood Money

The Central African Republic, like many African states, is impoverished and has been in near-constant unrest for years. The government held power in Bangui, but its authority didn’t extend much beyond that. Several rebel factions controlled large territories outside the capital. Assistance from the United Nations as well as other African countries like Libya and South Africa helped little.

In 2017, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra invited Russian advisers and weapons into the country to help rebuild his army, securing an exemption from a UN arms embargo.

Touadéra also brought in mercenaries from the now notorious Wagner Group. Wagner, as a “private” military company, was officially independent of the Russian government and so enabled Putin to plausibly deny any foreign meddling. Initially only 175 Wagner soldiers arrived. But by 2021, analysts estimated this figure to have been roughly 2,600. Since the 2023 mutiny by Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and subsequent assimilation of the group into Russia’s official forces, 1,000 is a likelier estimate.

A maximum of 2,600 men may not seem like much. But even with a small number of soldiers, the Wagner Group has accomplished a lot. They helped stave off successive rebel waves against Bangui to keep Touadéra in power. Wagner serves as Touadéra’s personal bodyguards. Valeriy Zakharov, a former Russian intelligence officer, became Touadéra’s main security adviser. In 2023, Touadéra brought in a new contingent of Wagner troops just before a referendum to amend the C.A.R. constitution and abolish presidential term limits. The presidency even admitted that part of the purpose of the new arrivals was “securing the constitutional referendum.” The referendum passed overwhelmingly; critics claimed it had a turnout of about 10 percent.

What does Russia gain from all this? Wealth—lots of it—in the form of natural resources, especially gold. The C.A.R. government gave a Wagner corporate affiliate exclusive rights to the Ndassima gold mine, the country’s largest. It also gave Wagner exclusive logging rights—a profitable industry, considering the C.A.R. sits partly within the Congo Rainforest. The Blood Gold Report assessed in December 2023 that Putin had reaped over $2.5 billion in the African gold trade since launching the Ukraine war in February 2022.

Even if Touadéra is using Wagner to pull off a power grab, some may argue that Wagner gives necessary stability that the C.A.R. so desperately lacked. But Touadéra didn’t import Russian mercenaries to play nice. Wagner has brought some stability at the expense of unleashing a reign of terror.

Wagner is implicated in countless atrocities: murdering journalists; systemically raping women; massacring villages, often to gain access to more gold reserves. And it has acted with the full support of the C.A.R. government. As the Human Rights Foundation put it, Russia has “exacerbated long-running lawlessness, corruption, violence and human rights abuses with total impunity.”

In one example from the town of Bambari, in 2021 Wagner moved in to exert control over the area’s gold assets. According to witnesses, Wagner’s way of “moving in” meant indiscriminately shooting people for no reason. “They were shooting us from the ground, and planes fired from the sky,” Madina, a survivor, told cbs News. “So many people died, it was hard to count.”

“To say ‘killing’ is an understatement,” Usman, Madina’s son, stated. “It was total carnage. Like Armageddon.”

C.A.R.’s situation would be bleak, Russians or no Russians. But this is not an issue impacting merely one country in the heart of Africa. The C.A.R. is one of several Russian proxies in Africa, and the list is growing. What Russia did in the C.A.R. became a blueprint to apply to the rest of Africa: Find a wobbly dictatorship urgently requesting soldiers who don’t care about human rights, then send in mercenaries in exchange for natural resource rights. Some countries Russia has applied this formula to impact the wider world more than the C.A.R. does.

Probably the most visible of these is Libya.

On Europe’s Doorstep

Since the 2011 United States-led campaign to oust dictator Muammar Qadhafi, Libya has been in an almost continuous on-and-off state of civil war. The current fighting ended several years ago, but Libya is still divided among three governments. The internationally recognized Libyan government, based in Tripoli, controls much of the country’s western half. A rival government, also based in Tripoli, holds little actual authority. The east of the country is under the sway of warlord Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (lna).

Haftar is a Russian proxy. Since 2016, the Russian government has provided over $10 billion in financial support to the lna. Wagner also had roughly 2,000 soldiers fighting on Haftar’s behalf. Wagner also has its own air force of attack helicopters, bombers and fighters in Libya. It has established a missile defense system for the lna. In 2020, several hundred Wagner troops participated in the lna’s failed siege of Tripoli.

Wagner also gives Haftar international sponsorship to hold his army together. The lna is not a unified fighting force but a network of militias with different ideologies and different end goals. Foreign sponsorship, including from Russia, gives Haftar some “glue” for his potpourri army. Some speculate that without Wagner, Haftar would be unable to hold his territory for long.

Libya’s strategic importance lies in its proximity to Europe. It is less than 700 miles from Malta. It’s a popular launch site for migrants from Africa to sail to Europe. Between May and June of 2023, the International Organization for Migration recorded 700,000 migrants living in 100 Libyan municipalities. Europe continues to struggle with massive flows of illegal immigration and associated Islamic terrorism. Russia’s sponsorship of Haftar gives it sizable leverage over one of the main gates to Europe—and this as Europe helps sponsor the fight against Russia in Ukraine.

It also gives Russia leverage over one of Africa’s biggest sources of energy. At 48 billion barrels, Libya’s estimated oil reserves are about 39 percent of Africa’s total. The majority of its oil exports goes to Europe. Libya also has natural gas reserves amounting to roughly 53 trillion cubic feet. Since the Ukraine war erupted in 2022, it is no longer politically correct for Europe to depend on Russia for natural gas, forcing Europe to look for alternative suppliers.

As in the Central African Republic, Russia sends its boots on the ground for a price. In this case, it wants Libya’s oil market. In 2020, the Libyan National Oil Corporation announced that Wagner had seized the Sharara oil field, Libya’s largest, with a 300,000 barrel-per-day capacity. Wagner has control over other oil-producing regions as well.

All the way in North Africa, Russia has made itself into a factor that Europe cannot ignore.

Scrambling for Africa

North of the Central African Republic lies the Sahel. Derived from the Arabic word for “shore,” it is an arid belt of scrubland that hugs the southern “coastline” of the even more inhospitable Sahara Desert from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Most of the region is Islamic. Many countries in the Sahel are struggling to contain jihadist insurgencies and have turned to partners like the U.S., France and Germany to send soldiers for counterterrorism operations. This was the case for Mali, Niger and Chad, all former French colonies.

However, Mali and Niger have undergone recent coups, booting out their pro-Western governments and installing military juntas. The juntas are still committed to fighting the jihadists but are tired of Western nations meddling in their affairs. France, the region’s former colonial ruler, controlled one of the main contingents in Western counterterrorism forces in the area. And France was a particular target of the juntas’ wrath. Mali alone had 2,400 French soldiers, more than half of France’s entire contingent in the Sahel.

Mali had its anti-Western coup in 2021. France started withdrawing its troops from Mali in 2022 and finished the following year. Germany removed the last of its roughly 1,000 soldiers this year.

2021 was also the year Wagner forces first came into Mali. According to a 2021 Reuters report, Mali promised Wagner almost $11 billion monthly for a mercenary force of as many as 1,000 soldiers. Unlike in the C.A.R. or Libya, Wagner has been less than effective in countering Mali’s insurgency. But Mali still uses it.

With Mali lost, France refocused its military mission on nearby Niger, where the U.S. already had a base of over 1,000 soldiers. Germany was about to do the same. But in July 2023, the Niger military staged its own coup and told France’s 1,500 troops to go home. By the end of the year, France complied. The new regime allowed the U.S. to remain. But in March, after accusing the U.S. of meddling in its foreign policy, junta spokesman Amadou Abdramane said the “American presence on the territory of the Republic of Niger is [now] illegal.” In April, U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. troops would leave.

Again, the beneficiary of these developments was Russia.

A year has passed since Wagner’s attempted mutiny in June 2023. Putin has since rebranded Wagner as Russia’s new “Africa Corps.” But he still offered Niger the same services his mercenaries had always provided. In a major snub, Reuters reported May 2 that Niger allowed Wagner to garrison at an air base that U.S. servicemen were still using; the Pentagon allowed it.

There are many more examples of Russia establishing proxies in Africa. In Sudan, Russia is sponsoring the Rapid Support Forces (rsf), a paramilitary faction that controls half the country and is infamous as the genocidal death squad that ex-dictator Omar Bashir used against the Darfuri people. Russia’s influence in Sudan is apparently so important that Ukraine has sent its special forces to help the Sudanese government fight the rsf. Russia has supplied Sudan through Chad, another former French colony. Russia has enough inroads into Chad that, according to the Washington Post, it is training Chadian rebels in an “evolving plot to topple the Chadian government” (April 24, 2023). There is also evidence Wagner successfully influenced an election in Madagascar.

All over Africa, the pattern is repeating: America and Europe out; Russia in. As the Africa Center for Strategic Studies put it, “Russia has arguably expanded its influence in Africa in recent years more than any other external actor.” Putin has succeeded in doing what Russia never achieved back in colonial days: establishing an empire in Africa.

What the Bible Says

There is one prophecy the Trumpet goes to time and again to interpret events in Africa: “And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him [the king of the north]: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over. … He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps” (Daniel 11:40, 42-43).

This is an end-time prophecy of two power blocs clashing just before the return of the Messiah (see Daniel 12:1-4). Biblical and secular history show that the king of the north is a European power led by Germany. Since the 1990s, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has identified the king of the south as a radical Islamist bloc led by Iran.

Verses 42-43 bring in Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia. “Egypt [and the other countries] will be conquered or controlled by the king of the north,” Mr. Flurry writes in The King of the South. “This clearly implies that Egypt [and Libya and Ethiopia] will be allied with the king of the south.”

Iran is always looking to expand its proxy empire. It hasn’t yet acquired Egypt, Libya or Ethiopia. But on the basis of these verses, the Trumpet expects Iran to expand its proxies in Africa soon. Europe, however, will hit Iran with a “whirlwind” attack (verse 40). “If you are in a whirlwind,” Mr. Flurry writes, “it whirls all around you. Even now, we can see that the German strategy is to surround Iran and its allies” (ibid). The Trumpet also expects Europe to move more soldiers into Africa to counter Iran.

Russia isn’t in the narrative of this prophecy in Daniel. But what Vladimir Putin is doing in Africa is setting the stage for this prophecy in a dramatic way.

Even today, Russia’s expansion in the region is helping Iran. Niger is a special case. According to the World Nuclear Association, Niger was the seventh-largest producer of uranium, recording 2,226 tons of production in 2022. Iran, which is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon, produced an estimated 24 tons that year.

Niger is also trying to sell Iran uranium. The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. intelligence on March 17, claimed Niger had been negotiating its own “nuclear deal” with Iran since January. On May 2, Africa Intelligence reported Niger offered Iran 330 tons of uranium concentrate in exchange for weapons systems. These talks with Iran partly provoked complaints of the U.S. “meddling” that ultimately led to its troop eviction.

France depends on Niger for much of its nuclear power. It looks like much of that will now go to Iran. France and Germany have also been made to look bad with their militaries’ evictions through these Russia-friendly coups. Because of Russia, Europe is focusing more and more attention on Africa.

Russia is holding onto its empire with very few troops—just a couple of thousand or so in places. That’s not a lot. And they are not always effective. An August 2023 UN report said that the Islamic State’s affiliate in Mali almost doubled its territorial conquests in less than a year. The 2023 Wagner coup demonstrated that Putin’s control over these troops isn’t ironclad. If these several thousand Russians were taken out of the picture, radical Islam could spread through the region like wildfire. Or the juntas could shop for other sponsors, giving Iran an even bigger opening.

Or it could force junta leaders to return to Europe, cap in hand, and give the rising European power an excuse to send more soldiers into Africa.

Either way, though Bible prophecy doesn’t state Russia will stay “king” of the Middle East and North Africa in the long run, what Russia is doing right now is paving the way for the real kings to take over. In this sense, even all the way in Africa, Russia is literally helping fulfill Bible prophecy.