Are White Mercenaries Fighting in the DR Congo? DRC
Located on an unpaved side street near the international airport of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo , the Hotel Mbiza usually caters to businesspeople or government delegations from the capital, Kinshasa. But since around Christmas of 2022, white military personnel from Eastern Europe have fully booked the hotel.
The presence of white-armed men at the Mbiza Hotel sparked rumors that the government hired the notorious Russian mercenary Wagner Group to help fight the rebels. Diplomatic circles have been speculating for weeks on the meaning of the presence of these armed Eastern European men in Goma amid a new round of fighting in eastern DRC.The war erupted last spring after Tutsi rebels of the M23 seized a vast swath of land along the border with neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has consistently denied the presence of Wagner mercenaries on his country's territory."I know it's fashionable now," he had said in a recent interview, adding:"No, we don't have to use mercenaries." The government recently explained why it does not need to hire Wagner's mercenaries."If we get Sukhoi aircraft [Russian fighter planes], we need the technical personnel to maintain them.
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