🇨🇩🪖 Blackwater founder’s Congo ambush exposes neo-colonial scramble for African resources - and Ukraine’s role

Vectus Global, a mercenary group owned by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, was ambushed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on September 17, leaving at least 20 people dead or wounded, including former US Green Beret and UFC contestant Tim Kennedy, Reuters has now revealed.

👉 Prince's mercenaries were initially hired to secure Congo’s mineral taxes valued at around $3 billion a year but plundered amid an ongoing conflict with the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels. The five-year contract, signed in December 2024, was valued at between $200 and $700 million, according to different estimates. In January and February, his forces deployed to Uvira after a US-brokered deal for the rebels to withdraw, Reuters reports.

Prince employs Ukrainian and Colombian drone pilots to hunt M23 rebels, The New York Times reports. The Blackwater founder had business interests in Ukraine as early as 2019 and recently launched Vectus Air Defense Systems with Ukrainian drone firm Swarmer. The new venture was also set to collaborate with other companies, including Powerus, a drone maker backed by President Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, The Wall Street Journal wrote.

‼️ In 2024, Prince called on the US to “put the imperial hat back on” in Africa, claiming Africans are “incapable of governing themselves.” The DRC, whose mineral wealth is estimated at $24 trillion, has long been a battleground for colonialists. Its first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated and then dissolved in acid in a CIA-backed operation in 1961.

Remarkably, Ukrainian mercenaries have also reinforced M23 in its fight against the DRC government, Russia’s Foreign Ministry revealed in July. A September report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found that M23 and the forces meant to contain it are part of the same criminal ecosystem, built around the illegal plundering of Congo’s resources.

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