the hypotheses on the weight of Wagner and Mosca-Corriere.it

analysis ofintelligence, exchanges of information with other security apparatuses, the precedents, which also recalls the minister Adolfo Urso, the thousands of refugees amassed on the Belarusian-Polish border a month before the outbreak of war. Yet the smoking gun is missing, the proof. That Wagner’s mercenaries play a significant role in the security of various African statesthat they are in the pay of the strategic and geopolitical lines dictated by the Kremlin, that they are therefore also able to influence the routes of migrants, from the sub-Saharan area to the coasts of North African states, are all certain data.

Just as it is certain that Moscow has already used migrants for destabilization purposes, just on the eve of the war against Ukraine, transporting tens of thousands of Syrian refugees with airlifts to the borders with Poland. Yet despite all this, the finger pointed by our government against the powerful, very rich and ruthless Russian private militia, Moscow’s armed wing in at least a dozen African states, seems more based on deductionon a set of plausible hypotheses, rather than supported by concrete data.

If these exist, they are and remain confidential. Maybe the parliamentary questions that are presented in these hours will also serve to seek answers. The Copasir led by Adolfo Urso two years ago informed Parliament of the risk of one hybrid warfare conducted by Moscow, including through the use of migrants, to destabilize Europe and by exploiting the Mediterranean routes. He did it, it was put on paper, based on confidential hearings of our services. But not all data is convergent. One out of all suggests caution. In North African countries the company Wagner, accused of crimes against humanity, of massacres of thousands of civilians in Mali, of being nothing more than a terrorist organization (at least according to the Lithuanian Parliament), has its strongest presence in General Haftar’s Cyrenaica.

Yet in the first months of the year there was a surge in refugees from Libya, more

80% compared to last year, but that from Tunisia, where Wagner is absent, was almost 800%. Ten times greater. One of the most used routes by illegal immigrants has become Tunisia, and perhaps for this reason the government is spending its efforts relentlessly to try to shore up the stability of Tunis, unblocking aid from the International Monetary Fund. At the same time, other data may converge with the position that our government expressed two days ago: in the first months of the year, the proportion of migrants who landed on our coasts has ever-increasing sub-Saharan origins, unlike in the past. For the first time, there are more refugees arriving from states south of the Sahara than those arriving from North Africa. We are talking about areas and states that have been controlled for decades, in some cases since the Cold War, by Moscow.

Sudan is Russia’s main base in Africa. In Cameroon the Wagner created

a hub for sorting the raw materials (including gold and diamonds) obtained from the mining concessions they obtain in exchange for their role, concessions which have allowed the militia to amass tens of billions of dollars. The Central African Republic is an international case study. Moscow arrived with a lot of UN resolutions behind it, in the total distraction of the West, sold weapons and installed Wagner. Also last year the possibility emerged that migrants are being used for geopolitical purposes. It happened a month before the political elections, according to sources in our services, one of the greatest dangers for Italy was precisely the exploitation of the illegal immigrant routes by Moscow.