Wagner mercenaries plotted attacks on Chevron pipelines
In 2021, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group planned attacks on infrastructure in Africa, including pipelines owned by the American oil company Chevron. This information was revealed by the Ukrainian broadcaster Channel 24, which accessed internal correspondence from the Concord Group, co-owned by the now-deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.
According to Channel 24, the mercenaries intended to collaborate with African terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda. The hacked correspondence contained emails from relatives of Russian mercenaries who died in Ukraine and from parents asking Prigozhin to employ their sons.
One of the authors of these emails was Igor Smirnov, a former Russian intelligence officer, who, in the correspondence, suggested that he worked for oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In March 2021, Smirnov warned in one of the emails to the Concord Group that, to his knowledge, retired Russian officers were planning to participate in attacks on foreign infrastructure facilities in West Africa.
Smirnov claimed that Russians are contacting armed groups in West Africa, including Ansaru, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria, to attack Western oil companies in the Niger Delta. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was to take responsibility for these attacks. Smirnov assured that he had video and audio evidence of Wagner Group mercenaries' involvement in preparations for these attacks.
"All of this will soon fall upon your company, which destabilises the situation in West Africa, collaborates with terrorists, and wages an indirect war with the West," Smirnov warned.
Threatened Americans
In another email, Smirnov accused the Wagner Group of extorting money from Chevron in exchange for the inviolability of pipelines in Nigeria. He included a video allegedly showing Andrey Troshev, a close associate of Prigozhin, meeting with warlord Asari Dokubo, the commander of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, was, for years, Putin's trusted figure, earning the nickname of his "personal chef." Their relationship ended in June 2023 when Prigozhin rebelled against the Russian military command. He died two months later in a plane crash, which many attribute to Putin.
