Answers: Wagner and Yevgeny Prigozhin
I had posted this quiz last August after Russia confirmed the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group in a plane crash. President Vladimir Putin called Prigozhin a “talented person” who made “serious mistakes” but achieved the “right results”. Prigozhin had a long association with Putin dating back to the 1990s when the future president was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. His company Concord began providing catering services for major government events, earning him the nickname ‘Putin’s Chef’.
The crash happened two months after Prigozhin led a mutiny against the military leadership and threatened to march on Moscow. But he withdrew following a deal under which he and some of his fighters moved to Belarus and a criminal case was dropped.
Wagner was formed in 2014 to support pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region and expanded globally over the years, especially in Africa and the Middle East.
Answers:
1) Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death has been compared to the death of a military dictator in a mysterious plane crash in 1988. Who? The novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes is based on the dictator’s death.
General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan. More here and here. More about Mohammed Hanif and his novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes here, here and here.
2) Among the bodies officially identified along with Prigozhin is that of a former Russian military officer and co-founder of Wagner. The group took its name from his radio call sign and he was known to be fan of the German composer Richard Wagner. Who?
Dmitry Utkin. More here and here.
3) Russian state media reported that the head of the Air Force who was known as ‘General Armageddon’ was sacked, hours before the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin. He has been linked to Prigozhin and disappeared from public view in June after the Wagner founder called off his coup attempt. Who?
General Sergei Surovikin. More here and here.
4) Which organisation launched by Prigozhin was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018? It was mentioned in detail in Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Internet Research Agency. More here and here.
5) Which Russian city’s military sites were seized by Wagner fighters during the coup attempt in June? This city houses the command centre for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Rostov-on-Don. More here and here.
6) Wagner forces appeared in this oil-rich country in 2019 in support of a general-turned-militia leader who controls part of it. The country has two rival parliaments, and the militia leader launched an attack on the UN-recognised rival government. The conflict ended in a ceasefire in October 2020. Wagner forces have been guarding military and oil installations controlled by its ally. Name the country.
Libya. The general-turned-militia leader is Khalifa Haftar. More about Haftar in my earlier quiz on Chad here.
7) Prigozhin bankrolled the 2021 Russian film Tourist which was also dubbed in the Sango language. Its lead character is a Russian police officer who signs up to train soldiers in an African country mired in civil war. Tourist depicts Russian instructors who come to the rescue of a struggling government facing a rebel attack on the capital ahead of elections in December 2020 (this mirrors real-life events). Which country?
Central African Republic. More here. More on Russia and Wagner’s increasing influence in the country here and here.
More on the films bankrolled by Wagner here and here.
8) Wagner forces were invited to this African country by the military junta following two coups in 2020 and 2021, amid separatist threats. A UN report accuses Wagner of taking part in a massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians along with the country’s military in 2022. UN peacekeepers are now withdrawing from the country at the government’s request. Which country?
Mali. My recent quiz on West Africa and the region’s recent history of coups below.
9) Wagner fighters played a key role in the Russian seizure of which Ukrainian city, after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war so far?
Bakhmut. More here, here and here.
10) Wagner forces played an important role in the recapture of which ancient city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site from ISIL in Syria? (Wagner entered Syria after President Putin decided to intervene militarily to support the Bashar Al Assad government in 2015)
11) Pro-Syrian government forces along with Wagner fighters attacked a base of the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on February 7, 2018. What were the consequences of the attack?
The base was used by the U.S. military. The U.S. pushed back hard and hundreds of Wagner fighters were killed in the bloodiest confrontation involving forces from the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War. More here and here.
12) Wagner fighters were deployed in southern Africa in 2019 to fight hardline Islamist rebels in a gas-rich region. But the group had to pull out after sustaining heavy casualties. Later Rwandan forces played a decisive role in quelling the rebel threat. Which country?
Mozambique. More here, here and here. More here on the Wagner-produced film Granit, which paints a rosier picture of the operation in Mozambique.
13) This country is the third largest gold producer in Africa. A company called M Invest and its subsidiary Meroe Gold were awarded concessions to explore gold mining sites, shortly after the country’s president travelled to Moscow to seek security assistance. The U.S. imposed sanctions on the two companies in 2020, alleging they were owned by Prigozhin. Wagner has been accused of supplying arms to a paramilitary force that’s now engaged in a conflict with the country’s military (Prigozhin denied any involvement in the conflict). Which country?
Sudan. More on the links between Sudan’s former President Omar Al Bashir and Wagner here. Wagner was accused by the U.S. of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces soon after the RSF and Sudan’s military started fighting in April 2023. To complicate matters further, Ukrainian special forces are operating in Sudan on the military’s side, targeting Wagner fighters aligned with the RSF.
My earlier quiz on Sudan is below.
14) The biggest threat to the Kremlin (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) before Prigozhin’s brief mutiny was a standoff between the president and parliament over economic policy in 1993. President Boris Yeltsin announced the dissolution of parliament. The parliament speaker and his supporters retaliated by voting to impeach Yeltsin. Parliament supporters fought with police on the streets of the capital and Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on parliament. Who was the speaker? He died in January this year (he was prominently in the news at the time but withdrew from politics after the revolt was crushed).
Ruslan Khasbulatov. More here, here, here, here.
You can read about the failed coup two years earlier in 1991 as the Soviet Union neared collapse in my quiz on Mikhail Gorbachev and his legacy.