West's Desire to Control Russia-Friendly Africa Explains MI6 Plot to Send Ukrainian Mercs

A military-diplomatic source revealed to Sputnik and other Russian media Wednesday that Britain’s foreign intelligence service, the MI6, has prepared a 100-militant-strong “sabotage hit squad” to send to Africa on missions against Russia-friendly governments. Sputnik reached out to a Russian special forces vet to dissect the details of these plans.

“According to information confirmed by several sources…MI6 has formed and prepared for deployment on the southern continent a sabotage and assassination squad, comprising of members of Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi formations, in an attempt to prevent cooperation between African countries and Russia,” an informed source told Sputnik early Wednesday morning.

According to the source’s information, the MI6 and the British Army’s elite Special Air Service special forces unit helped handpick the 100-man squad from among fighters with “significant combat experience” against Russia. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry (GUR) were directed to assist them, with the would-be mercenaries’ training conducted in Greece and Poland.

The squad is reportedly led by Lieutenant Colonel Vitaliy Prashchuk, a veteran GUR officer with reported experience in “successful liquidations,” including combat experience in Donbass going back to 2014, and assisting covert MI6 missions in Zimbabwe.

Along with operations to sabotage African countries’ infrastructure (a favorite tactic of Western special operations on the continent during the Cold War), the secretive Ukrainian unit’s job will reportedly include attempts to assassinate African leaders seeking closer ties with Moscow.

A chartered civilian ship sailing from the southern Ukrainian port city of Izmail is thought to have taken the squad on route to Sudan, and is expected to arrive in the Sudanese Nile-adjacent city of Omdurman sometime “during the second half of August.”

Record of British-Ukraine Military Cooperation

Successive post-1991 governments of Ukraine have unfortunately been no strangers to supporting anti-Russian and pro-Western military operations abroad, with radicalized nationalists traveling to the Russian Caucasus in the mid and late 1990s to fight against Russian forces engaged in counter-terrorism and counter-separatism missions, and Kiev sending a 1,700-strong contingent of troops to Iraq during the US and UK-led invasion in 2003. In 2008, Ukrainian ultranationalists reportedly took part in Georgia’s invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which triggered a Russian military intervention after peacekeepers were killed.

British-Ukrainian military and intelligence cooperation has been extensive since the 2014 Euromaidan coup in Kiev, with the UK training tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, sending over £9.2 billion ($11.7 billion) in military and economic support to Kiev, and providing additional material and training assistance for Ukrainian small boat terror attacks against Russian civilian infrastructure and Black Sea ships. As if to accent the extent of this cooperation, Russian forces struck a British-built naval base at Ochakov, Nikolaev region on the very first day of the special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022.

Politically too, the UK has served an instrumental role in sabotaging Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations, with now former Prime Minister Boris Johnson jetting off to Kiev in April 2022 to convince President Volodymyr Zelensky not agree to a peace plan which had been hammered out in Belarus and Turkiye.

Now, it seems, the MI6 may be looking to further "internationalize" Ukrainian military operations abroad, this time in Africa.

MI6 Delusions

“I think that lately the MI6 and its leadership have been feeling inadequate in the current situation,” Sergey Goncharov, a military expert and veteran of Russia’s elite Alpha counterterror special forces unit, told Sputnik.

“If you remember, just a month ago the head of MI6 issued an address to Russian citizens expressing readiness to recruit people,” the observer recalled, pointing to the absurdity of such statements. “I think that for a serious person who serves as the head of an intelligence agency, such statements even sound alarming, to some extent.”

As far as the reported plans to deploy Ukrainian saboteurs to Africa are concerned, Goncharov believes that apart from a propaganda effect, it is unlikely to have any impact on the region. “For starters, if Ukraine is so strong and has such a serious special forces unit, why can’t these special forces solve the serious problem on the front between Ukraine and Russia?” he asked.

Secondly, the observer noted, it’s questionable where Ukraine may have found these would-be mercenary operators, given the horrendous losses their troops have faced in recent months, including forces trained in Britain.

“If [the MI6] hopes that the special forces allegedly sent from Ukraine will solve the ‘problem’ of Niger, this, I think, is simply laughable. I don’t think they’re needed there at all,” Goncharov said.

Dismissing any potential political or military impact of possible Ukrainian mercenary operations in Africa, Goncharov believes the only effect they could possibly hope to achieve would be limited to the realm of propaganda, which, he noted, “unfortunately” often “causes more of an uproar than military operations.”

Attempts to Put Africa ‘Back in Its Place’ Will Fail

“Africa was a colony of all these Western countries. Russia has never been a colonial state,” Goncharov pointed out, when asked about the West’s attempts to undermine cooperation between African countries and Moscow.

“Naturally, neither Britain, nor the Americans, nor the other Western countries of NATO like this. They do not want to lose their profits and political influence,” he stressed.

As far as potential Western efforts to meddle in African affairs are concerned, regional countries don’t need a regional war, and are instead actively seeking more cooperation with Russia. Accordingly, “even if this [Ukrainian] unit has already been created, it won’t solve any real ‘problems’” for the West, the observer summed up.

Plausible Deniability

Former CIA station chief, columnist and security consultant Philip Giraldi echoed Goncharov's sentiments on the UK's likely motives.

"I think these reports are completely plausible. Britain wishes to retain its special relationships with a number of African nations which give it access to raw materials that it lacks as well as political support in fora like the United Nations. It would use Ukrainian mercenaries to carry out the disruption because that gives it plausible denial whereby it can always pretend that it is in no way involved," Giraldi, now serving as executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik.

"The rapidly growing influence of both Russia and China in much of the Third World terrifies the political leadership in Britain and also in the United States, note for example the recent Africa trip of the State Department number two Victoria Nuland, who is about as hardline as it is possible to be and has frequently expressed her hatred for Russia. Note also the recent Africa centered conference hosted by the Russian government in St. Petersburg, which attracted representatives from 49 countries including seventeen heads of state, which I am sure caused a panic in Washington, London and Paris," Giraldi said.

Colonel Jacques Hogard, a 26-year veteran of the French Army as an airborne officer in the Foreign Legion and Special Forces, told Sputnik that if reports of MI6 plans to use Ukrainian forces in Africa can be confirmed, they certainly wouldn't be beyond London's capabilities or disposition, both toward Russia or even some of its allies.

"Using Ukrainians in this special unit would have a certain meaning: that of making a link between the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the African theater in the broad sense. If this is indeed the intention, it obviously aims to serve Anglo-American interests, which are those of NATO. And of course, not those of other powers - Russia of course, but also it must be said with force, France, which is rooted in Africa by history, especially the two World Wars, and by the Francophonie. France is an obstacle to Anglo-Saxon influence in Africa," Hogard said, suggesting that with "allies" like Washington and London, Paris has no need for enemies.