Russia has deployed as many as 200 military instructors to Equatorial Guinea in Moscow’s latest bid to expand its influence in western Africa. 

The instructors, who were deployed over the past few weeks, are there to protect the country’s presidency by training elite guards, sources have told the Reuters news agency. 

This comes despite Russian setbacks in Mali, where dozens of Moscow-backed Wagner Group mercenaries were killed in July by Tuareg rebels and al Qaeda-linked militants.

Equatorial Guinea is an oil-exporting country, although major US investment in past years has been somewhat scaled back.

Its 82-year-old president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – who has ruled since seizing power in a coup in 1979 – is set to appoint his favourite son to succeed him, and Russian presence could help ease that transition by warding off external threats.

Why is Russia in Africa?

For Moscow, assignments like this have two obvious advantages.

First, financial. 

Moscow is often paid directly for services like this, or they open up major economic opportunities – and with an oil exporter like Equatorial Guinea, there are plenty of those. 

Secondly, it allows the Kremlin to defy the West, with many countries also holding interests on the continent. 

To apply those incentives to this example – on 27 September, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that the two countries had discussed terms for Russian companies to enter Equatorial Guinea’s oil and gas sector.

The US State Department said in response that it encouraged all countries, including Equatorial Guinea, to avoid transactions with Russian defence or Kremlin-backed proxies, saying these could trigger “serious consequences under US. law”

There have also been reports of Russian troops of the “Africa corps” operating in Burkina Faso and Niger.