Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by Gatimu Juma
The last anyone saw of Celestin Bakoyo and Elie Ngouengue, they were stepping into a police station in Bangui, in the Central African Republic. That was on January 24. Since then—nothing. No official charges, no explanations, just silence. And in a country where men vanish and never return, that silence is deafening.
Human rights advocates and opposition politicians in the Central African Republic are pointing fingers at the usual suspects: mercenaries—hired guns with ties to Moscow. They say the missing soldiers were snatched by Russia’s shadow army, the Wagner Group, whose influence has seeped into the country’s military like ink in water.
Bakoyo and Ngouengue weren’t just foot soldiers. They were leaders of a militia aligned with Wagner, tasked with fighting rebels in the country’s volatile southeast. They came to the capital to open bank accounts, to access the earnings promised to them after being folded into the army. Instead, they walked into a trap.
READ MORE from Gatimu Juma: Russian Wagner Fighters Captured, Traded for Ransom by Rebels
Ernest Mizedio, a politician from the region, says the men were among those originally detained by Russian mercenaries under the guise of military training. When their supporters started asking around—law enforcement, Russian contractors—every door slammed shut. No answers. No bodies. Just a cold shrug.
People aren’t buying the official line—because there is no official line. Officials have said they know nothing about the missing men. In the southeast, protests have erupted, demanding answers. Meanwhile, on the ground, Wagner’s grip is tightening. A police officer, speaking anonymously, says the Wagner forces are systematically edging out the law and becoming the law.
This latest disappearance comes as Russia tightens its hold on Africa, using its private armies to do the dirty work—putting down rebellions, eliminating enemies, securing economic assets. The Kremlin’s interests in the Central African Republic are clear: gold, diamonds, and a strategic foothold.
What’s less clear is what happens to those who cross them.
“These are kidnappings,” one police officer told Soldier of Fortune. “But how to prove it? And everyone knows, if they push too hard, they could be next.”
The CAR was one of Wagner’s early playgrounds. In 2021, when rebel forces nearly took Bangui, it was Russian mercenaries who fought them off. They were hailed as saviors then. But that savior narrative has since curdled. Reports of murder, torture, and rape have surfaced, following a 2023 investigation from a watchdog group detailing how Wagner operatives train the army in brutality—turning counterinsurgency into something far darker.
Now, two soldiers have disappeared. Maybe they knew too much. Maybe they stepped out of line. Or maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, in a country where power is measured in bullets and silence, their story is already slipping into the shadows.
And shadows are where the dead tend to stay.
Gatimu Juma reports on Africa.
