Until the events of the past week it seemed that the Wagner Group’s next outpost was more likely to be Burkina Faso than Belarus. But on June 27th Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in the latter, as part of a deal between the mutinous leader of the paramilitary network and Vladimir Putin. From there Mr Prigozhin hopes to run the brutal African operations that have become crucial not just to his empire but to the Kremlin’s approach to the continent.
