Moscow Trains the Presidential Guard of a Coup Leader in Antananarivo

Colonel Michaël Randrianirina seized power in Antananarivo in October 2025, after weeks of popular anger. By December, armed men from Africa Corps, the direct heir of Wagner, had arrived in the capital to train the presidential guard. This is not military cooperation. It is a hostage-taking.

Let us ask the question that no one in power wants to hear: who does the security of the man who stole his people's voice belong to? When a regime born of a coup calls on Russian mercenaries to guard its palaces, it is not protecting the nation. It is protecting its own survival. And it is selling Malagasy sovereignty to the highest bidder.

The facts are stubborn. According to information cross-checked by several diplomatic sources, the Russian chargé d'affaires became the first foreign diplomat to meet Colonel Michaël Randrianirina after he took power. That private meeting was no small thing. It marked the start of a method we know by heart in Central Africa and the Sahel. Moscow does not arrive as a conqueror. It walks through the half-open door, offers to "secure" the regime, and then advances its pieces until Western partners, starting with France, are expelled and an exclusive partnership is imposed.

Look at the arsenal deployed in a few months. An association of former students trained in the USSR, called Les Amis de la Russie, serves as an influence network between the new authorities and the embassy. University exchanges are launched. Shows devoted to Russian culture fill the calendar. The national radio and television, financed by Malagasy taxpayers, now devote a weekly program to Russian-Malagasy relations. And African Initiative, sanctioned by the European Union for disseminating disinformation across the continent, sets up shop in Antananarivo. When a sanctioned propaganda agency gains a local foothold, what circulates is not culture. It is a narrative.

Make no mistake: Russia is not the only one at work. China no longer limits itself to building roads and selling loans to African states. It now supplies radars, missiles, armed drones and air defence systems to armies in the Sahel and West Africa. Sophisticated equipment is delivered to Mali and Burkina Faso, and armed drones are present in Côte d'Ivoire. And the continent serves as a full-scale testing ground. Beijing trains on our territories, with our populations as the backdrop, to project its power far beyond its borders. In Egypt, six Chinese fighter jets flew 6,000 kilometres to train against French Rafales. A show of force, whose press kit never mentions the civilians who will live with the consequences.

Since opening its first military base in Djibouti in 2017, China has multiplied naval exercises and deployments. Officially, the aim is to protect its investments and its nationals. In practice, it is about learning to fight wars far from home, and establishing itself as an indispensable military partner against Western powers. While the great powers squabble over Africa, who is consulting Africans?

Do you want to know who profits from this race? Look at the results. Russian mercenaries win contracts, mining concessions and political influence. Chinese suppliers move their equipment and secure their supplies. The colonel in power buys his survival with weapons and gifts. And the Malagasy people? They pay in silence: in muzzled public freedoms, in resources sold off cheap, in young people watching their future decided in foreign drawing rooms.

This story is not new. The nineteenth century had its protectorate treaties signed under threat, its trading posts and its concessions. The twenty-first century has its opaque contracts, its mercenaries in unmarked fatigues and its news agencies dressed up as objectivity. The method changes its clothes, but the goal stays the same: extract, control, and never answer to the peoples concerned. And every time, it is Africans who open the door from the inside. Generals, colonels, elites who prefer a foreign protector to a demanding electorate.

So what is to be done? First, the African Union and SADC must maintain Madagascar's suspension until a credible, supervised and inclusive electoral timetable is published. No half measures, no normalisation by default. A power born of a coup cannot be treated as an ordinary partner. Second, Malagasy institutions must recover their independence: a parliament that truly oversees the executive, a judiciary that does not take calls from the palace, and a public press that does not broadcast the propaganda of a transitional government. Third, military cooperation agreements and resource extraction contracts must be published in full. Secrecy is the natural ally of corruption and servitude.

Our continent is not condemned to choose between a Western guardian and a Russian or Chinese protector. Botswana spent decades building a stable democracy and rigorous management of its resources. Mauritius has shown that rule of law, an open economy and independent institutions produce prosperity and civil peace. Senegal demonstrated in 2024 that a peaceful alternation of power, wrested by mobilised citizens, can repair a sick democracy. These experiences are not perfect. Yet they prove one essential thing: true sovereignty is built at the ballot box, in the courts and in free markets, not in barracks or in the drawing rooms of Beijing or Moscow.

Malagasy citizens, you are the first concerned, but you are not alone. Demand a precise election date and guarantees of candidacy for all. Demand the publication of every military, mining and media agreement signed since October 2025. Demand that foreign mercenaries leave the territory and that the presidential guard be trained by national institutions accountable to Parliament. And you, readers on the rest of the continent, do not let this file become one more Malagasy affair, forgotten in three weeks. Share it, question your governments, and demand that the African Union take a clear and public position.

The question remains, and it does not await a diplomatic answer. Who will defend the Malagasy people against those who claim to protect them? The answer will not come from Moscow, nor from Beijing, nor from a colonel who owes his power to the street and to force. It will come from us, or it will not come at all.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL