Russia plans to maintain its military presence, largely centred around the Wagner group of mercenaries, in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR), Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
Speaking on state television, Lavrov said that at the request of the relevant governments "several hundred military personnel are working in the CAR, let's say as instructors, and this work will be continued."
As Lavrov acknowledged, most of the personnel working in both the CAR and Mali are attached to Wagner, which mounted a sudden mutiny in southern Russia and advanced on Moscow over the weekend.
Lavrov said that speculation that Russia might terminate its military presence in Africa was Western propaganda.
He accused the US intelligence services of being aware of the preparations being made by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to topple the Russian government but concealing this from Moscow "apparently in the hope that the coup would succeed."
At the same time, there had been diplomatic signals to the effect that Washington was not involved in the attempted coup, Lavrov said.
He noted that the US ambassador in Moscow, Lynne Tracy, had informed Russian representatives during the crisis of US concerns for the security of Russia's large nuclear arsenal and made clear that the United States was not involved in the mutiny.
