The Russian government has deployed up to 200 troops to Equatorial Guinea in recent weeks to protect the President.
According to Reuters,Moscow is expanding its footprint in West Africa despite a recent defeat in Mali.
The sources said the Russians were training elite guards in the two main cities of the tiny oil-exporting country of 1.7 million people, where U.S. energy firms invested billions of dollars in the first decade of the century before scaling down.
The deployment fits into a wider pattern of waning Western influence and increasing Russian interventions in West and Central Africa, where Moscow has sent thousands of mercenaries to protect military regimes and help them fight insurgents.
For Russia, the assignments are a way to make money from government fees and economic opportunities in mining or energy, while defying the West as part of a global geopolitical confrontation playing out most dramatically in Ukraine.
In Equatorial Guinea, where 82-year-old President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled since seizing power in a coup in 1979 and is grooming his favourite son to succeed him, Russian security could ward off any threat to the ruling dynasty.
On a visit to Moscow in September, Obiang thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for sending “instructors” to strengthen Equatorial Guinea’s defences, state news agency TASS reported.
Reuters interviewed three diplomatic sources, another source from the opposition, one from civil society and two people close to the government in the former Spanish colony.
The sources, who did not want to be identified, confirmed a Russian presence in Equatorial Guinea. Three of them estimated that 100 to 200 Russians had arrived in the past two months.
Two of the sources said the military personnel may include troops from Russia’s ally Belarus, while Reuters identified one as coming from an elite Russian paratrooper unit. Two of the sources said the men were likely to be part of Africa Corps, a Kremlin-controlled paramilitary force.
