Equatorial Guinea: the security of President Obiang now ensured by Russian forces?

In August 2024, around 300 paramilitaries were deployed in Equatorial Guinea to ensure the security of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, his wife and their son, the vice-president “Teodorin”, according to information from the French media Lemonde.

This deployment, never officially announced by the authorities, remains discreet: we do not see them in any official photo, but their daily presence in Malabo does not go unnoticed. White men in military lattice, sometimes adorned with Russian insignia, began to appear in the capital in August 2024. They are notably seen near the presidential palace, by the sea, at the time of the surveyors.

Indeed, the presence of these Russian paramilitaries, qualified by some of them as mercenaries, arouses many questions in a country confronted with persistent poverty and a high unemployment rate. On the side of the authorities, the information remains fragmented.

Only a few ambiguous press releases were published, echoing the three visits of President Obiang in Russia in 2023 and 2024, as well as to the meetings in Malabo with the Russian defense vice-minister, Iounous-Bek Evkourov, on December 1, 2024 and March 3, 2025.

According to specialists, the latter was responsible for restructuring the Russian presence in Africa after the death of Evgueni Prigojine in August 2023, based on a new entity, Africa Corps, active in particular in the Sahel region, within the framework of the enlargement of Russian influence on the continent.