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Durant le soulevement populaire au Soudan contre le dictateur Al-Bachir et sa junte militaire, les Russes étaient trés actifs par des agents de propagandes et de fake news pour induire les citoyens Soudanais en erreur.
Les Russes supportaient le dictateur militaire Hamdan contre des mines d'Or pour la Russie au Soudan:
Fake news and public executions: Documents show a Russian company’s plan for quelling protests in Sudan
When anti-government protests erupted in Sudan at the end of last year, the response of President Omar al-Bashir came straight from the dictators’ playbook – a crackdown that led to scores of civilian deaths.
At the same time, a more insidious strategy was being developed – one that involved spreading misinformation on social media, blaming Israel for fomenting the unrest, and even carrying out public executions to make an example of “looters.”
The author of this strategy was not the Sudanese government. According to documents seen by CNN, it was drawn up by a Russian company tied to an oligarch favored by the Kremlin: Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Multiple government and military sources in Khartoum have confirmed to CNN that Bashir’s government received the proposals and began to act on them, before Bashir was deposed in a coup earlier this month. One official of the former regime said Russian advisers monitored the protests and began devising a plan to counter them with what he called “minimal but acceptable loss of life.”
While the documents do not come from official Russian agencies, they were essentially a blueprint for protecting the Kremlin’s interests in Sudan and keeping Bashir in power.
The documents seen by CNN, which include letters and internal company communications, are among several thousand obtained and investigated by the London-based Dossier Center, run by exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The Dossier Center receives data, documents and other information from a variety of sources, often anonymous, and shares them with journalists. Khodorkovsky ran afoul of President Vladimir Putin after alleging widespread corruption in Russia and spent several years in prison for alleged tax fraud – which he has always denied.
CNN has assessed the documents to be credible. They are also consistent with the accounts of witnesses who say Russian observers were seen at the recent protests in Sudan.
Sudan has been Moscow’s template for expanding its influence in Africa and around the globe: A hybrid of private and state interests that rewards both oligarchs and the Kremlin. It’s a low-cost strategy that gives Moscow a foothold in strategic places, without the commitment of regular forces or major investment by the Russian government. Instead it uses companies that supply private contractors in return for commercial concessions.
Indeed, the documents seen by CNN originate from a St. Petersburg-based company, M-Invest, which has an office in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. M-Invest lists as its core business the “extraction of ores and sands of precious metals.” As CNN has previously reported, the company was granted concessions for a gold mine in Sudan.
But its activities seem to have gone far beyond mining.
What the Dossier Center’s documents show
President Bashir cultivated a close relationship with the Kremlin, visiting Moscow in 2017. Russia supplied modern Su-35 fighter jets in the same year. Put simply, Russia had placed a big bet on Bashir. As protests against the regime gathered steam, that bet was at risk.
According to the documents reviewed by CNN, M-Invest drew up a plan to discredit and suppress those protests.
One document from early January, reviewed by CNN, proposes spreading claims that protesters were attacking mosques and hospitals. It also suggested creating an image of demonstrators as “enemies of Islam and traditional values” by planting LGBT flags among them. And it proposed a social media campaign claiming that “Israel supports the protesters.”
The strategy also suggested the government “simulate a dialogue with the opposition and demonstrate the openness of the government” in order to “isolate leaders of the protest and gain time.”
M-Invest proposed ways to make the government look good – through widely publicized “free distribution of bread, flour, grain, food.”
But most of its focus was on the protests. It recommended fabricating evidence “of arson by protesters against mosques, hospitals and nurseries, [and] stealing grain from the public store.”
It also suggested blaming the West for the protests and using “extensive media coverage of the interrogation of detainees, where they admit they arrived to organize civil war in Sudan.” And it even proposed “public executions of looters and other spectacular events to distract the protest-minded audience.”
CNN made multiple efforts to reach M-Invest. Its phone number in St. Petersburg did not work. An Arabic speaker answered a call to its office in Khartoum but hung up. CNN visited the address but was told the space was leased to a Russian company called Mir Gold.
Another company document recommends the arrest of protest leaders the day before demonstrations are due to take place – and spreading disinformation by saying that protesters were being paid to take part. Also recommended: Show how “security forces detained a car with weapons, foreign currency, propaganda materials operated by foreign citizens.”
Les Russes supportaient le dictateur militaire Hamdan contre des mines d'Or pour la Russie au Soudan:
Fake news and public executions: Documents show a Russian company’s plan for quelling protests in Sudan
When anti-government protests erupted in Sudan at the end of last year, the response of President Omar al-Bashir came straight from the dictators’ playbook – a crackdown that led to scores of civilian deaths.
At the same time, a more insidious strategy was being developed – one that involved spreading misinformation on social media, blaming Israel for fomenting the unrest, and even carrying out public executions to make an example of “looters.”
The author of this strategy was not the Sudanese government. According to documents seen by CNN, it was drawn up by a Russian company tied to an oligarch favored by the Kremlin: Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Multiple government and military sources in Khartoum have confirmed to CNN that Bashir’s government received the proposals and began to act on them, before Bashir was deposed in a coup earlier this month. One official of the former regime said Russian advisers monitored the protests and began devising a plan to counter them with what he called “minimal but acceptable loss of life.”
While the documents do not come from official Russian agencies, they were essentially a blueprint for protecting the Kremlin’s interests in Sudan and keeping Bashir in power.
The documents seen by CNN, which include letters and internal company communications, are among several thousand obtained and investigated by the London-based Dossier Center, run by exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The Dossier Center receives data, documents and other information from a variety of sources, often anonymous, and shares them with journalists. Khodorkovsky ran afoul of President Vladimir Putin after alleging widespread corruption in Russia and spent several years in prison for alleged tax fraud – which he has always denied.
CNN has assessed the documents to be credible. They are also consistent with the accounts of witnesses who say Russian observers were seen at the recent protests in Sudan.
Sudan has been Moscow’s template for expanding its influence in Africa and around the globe: A hybrid of private and state interests that rewards both oligarchs and the Kremlin. It’s a low-cost strategy that gives Moscow a foothold in strategic places, without the commitment of regular forces or major investment by the Russian government. Instead it uses companies that supply private contractors in return for commercial concessions.
Indeed, the documents seen by CNN originate from a St. Petersburg-based company, M-Invest, which has an office in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. M-Invest lists as its core business the “extraction of ores and sands of precious metals.” As CNN has previously reported, the company was granted concessions for a gold mine in Sudan.
But its activities seem to have gone far beyond mining.
What the Dossier Center’s documents show
President Bashir cultivated a close relationship with the Kremlin, visiting Moscow in 2017. Russia supplied modern Su-35 fighter jets in the same year. Put simply, Russia had placed a big bet on Bashir. As protests against the regime gathered steam, that bet was at risk.
According to the documents reviewed by CNN, M-Invest drew up a plan to discredit and suppress those protests.
One document from early January, reviewed by CNN, proposes spreading claims that protesters were attacking mosques and hospitals. It also suggested creating an image of demonstrators as “enemies of Islam and traditional values” by planting LGBT flags among them. And it proposed a social media campaign claiming that “Israel supports the protesters.”
The strategy also suggested the government “simulate a dialogue with the opposition and demonstrate the openness of the government” in order to “isolate leaders of the protest and gain time.”
M-Invest proposed ways to make the government look good – through widely publicized “free distribution of bread, flour, grain, food.”
But most of its focus was on the protests. It recommended fabricating evidence “of arson by protesters against mosques, hospitals and nurseries, [and] stealing grain from the public store.”
It also suggested blaming the West for the protests and using “extensive media coverage of the interrogation of detainees, where they admit they arrived to organize civil war in Sudan.” And it even proposed “public executions of looters and other spectacular events to distract the protest-minded audience.”
CNN made multiple efforts to reach M-Invest. Its phone number in St. Petersburg did not work. An Arabic speaker answered a call to its office in Khartoum but hung up. CNN visited the address but was told the space was leased to a Russian company called Mir Gold.
Another company document recommends the arrest of protest leaders the day before demonstrations are due to take place – and spreading disinformation by saying that protesters were being paid to take part. Also recommended: Show how “security forces detained a car with weapons, foreign currency, propaganda materials operated by foreign citizens.”
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