How Russia Used Influence Operations To Undermine U.S. Interests in Africa

Two years ago, the West African nation of Niger dismissed U.S. troops and welcomed Russian ones. A new report documents how Russian information operations exploited preexisting vulnerabilities that facilitated the U.S. withdrawal.

On February 20, Forbidden Stories, a global network of investigative reporters, published the second installment of its “Propaganda Machine” series, detailing how Moscow covertly advances its goal of displacing the United States and its allies across Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Based on 1,431 pages of internal documents leaked from an influence operations network overseen by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the investigative reports detail the operation’s strategy, which cost Moscow $8.6 million.

Russian Intelligence’s Influence Playbook 

Forbidden Stories revealed that the SVR cooperates with a front entity called the “Company” comprised of political scientists, PR specialists, and social media managers affiliated with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner. The United States has sanctioned Wagner multiple times since 2017 for malicious cyber activities, human rights abuses, and resource exploitation. According to acquired preparatory documents, the SVR supported and later quietly assumed direct control of the Company in December 2023, accelerating operations across Africa.

The overarching goal of the Company’s “Confederation of Independence” campaign was to build a “belt of regimes friendly to the Russian Federation” by weaponizing post-colonial resentment to destabilize African states. 

The Company’s operational plans reveal a repeatable, three-phased strategy. First, agents mapped a target country’s political landscape to identify exploitable grievances. Next, the Company recruited local journalists to disseminate propaganda, priming the information environment for political disruption. The Company spent $300,000 per month on media placements — ranging from $600 per article in Benin to $10,000 in Libya — amplifying disinformation across co-opted outlets. Lastly, agents formed covert relations with opposition leaders, military personnel, and intelligence agents through lobbying and bribery to disrupt national politics.

Displacing U.S. Interests Across Africa

The Company’s definition of success is illustrated by their documents’ after-action reviews, which boast of reshaping regional geopolitics to favor Russian interests. The Company claims credit for forging the Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger), manufacturing media pressure in Niger to revoke French firm Orano’s uranium mining licenses, and infiltrating the inner circle of the president of Chad, Mahamat Déby, to influence his political decisions. These campaigns exploit weak governance, post-colonial grievance, underfunded media, and corruptible officials. However, the Company is likely incentivized to inflate its impact to justify larger annual funding from the SVR.

The Company’s records reveal that these operations are valued in Russia as participating personnel were recommended for official decoration in recognition of their strategic impact.

Gen. (Ret.) Michael Langley, then head of United States Africa Command, publicly warned in June 2024 that Russian disinformation campaigns were systematically eroding U.S. and French credibility across Africa, undermining their diplomatic relationships. Both nations withdrew from Niger within months of this warning and Russian forces subsequently began operating in the same bases in Niamey, the country’s capital.

Washington Should Preempt Russia’s Expanding Playbook 

Countering adversarial malign influence is critical to America’s ability to preserve its national security and advance its interests abroad.  

The Department of the Treasury should impose financial sanctions on individuals identified by Forbidden Stories as operating on behalf of the Wagner group. These sanctions would deny operatives’ diplomatic cover and restrict their travel and banking access. The Treasury Department should also send high-level delegations to banks believed to be unwittingly supporting the flow of funds from Wagner’s Company-related accounts and urge greater information sharing on these cross-border flows.

The Pentagon should deploy the Army’s Theater Information Advantage Detachments to train military and civilian personnel in identifying adversarial information warfare, assess theater-level threats, and mobilize resources to counter country-level operations before they shift public opinion in partner nations. The Pentagon’s initiatives should coordinate with the State Department’s Bureau of Global Affairs to align messaging and deconflict with allied counter-information efforts. Congress should sustain funding through annual appropriations.

Max Lesser is a senior analyst on emerging threats at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD’s) Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI), where Ethan Sheinker is an intern. For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security.