Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is their most recent assessment of the number of Wagner Group operatives in Africa, and in which countries are they operating.

The UK Government has repeatedly emphasised the destabilising role of Wagner Group in Mali, Central African Republic (CAR) and the wider region. Open source reporting has suggested Wagner deployments in CAR, Libya and Mali range between 1,000 to 1,900 operators per country. True numbers are highly uncertain as Wagner is part of a wider grouping of companies associated with Evgeny Prigozhin. We work closely with our international and regional partners, including through the UN, to counter the malign use of proxies like Wagner Group by Russia. The UK Government sanctioned Wagner Group in its entirety in 2022, which will weaken their capabilities in Africa.