Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

But Prigozin didn't care about such considerations, because what Slava offered him was too great—the opportunity to be a local tyrant in Africa, plus a promise of a safe landing in the end.

For a fugitive who's crawled out of prison and spent years rotting in the streets, what could be better than this?

"Comrade General Secretary," Prigozin said solemnly, "you gave me my life, and you have helped me with everything I have done over the years. I, Prigozin, am not an ungrateful person. Rest assured, I will definitely do a great job for the Union in Africa!"

Slava nodded in satisfaction.

“Go ahead, Griffin’s boss.”

Chapter 93 A Spark...

I'm about to take a team to Africa, so I need to get the personnel reorganization sorted out first.

Over the years, many people in Afghanistan have longed for peace. Some mercenaries are only there for money or to serve their families. Some have earned enough money and plan to go home. Rather than forcing them to stay, it's better to let them go home with dignity.

So Prigozin gathered his troops together and stood before his comrades in battle, saying:

"The war in Afghanistan is over! My brothers followed me and did everything they were supposed to do, without any hesitation!"

Next, we're going to a new place to do something even greater! Those who want to continue working with me, stay. Those who don't want to work anymore and want to go home, I won't force them!

Then he started handing out money. His demobilization pay was in full, and travel expenses were covered. Some of his longtime comrades who had followed him for years even gave him an extra sum—it was a token of their appreciation.

These people had risked their lives and shed their blood for him; he couldn't let them leave empty-handed!

Prigozin shook hands with each of the departing people, patted them on the shoulder, and said things like "Go back and live well" and "Come to him anytime if you have any difficulties." Several staunch Slavs held his hands, their eyes reddening.

After Prigozin was finally deported, only a little over a thousand battle-hardened Russian veterans remained.

These men had fought alongside him through the gunfire of Afghanistan, knew each other inside and out, and were the true backbone of the team. With these thousand-plus men at the core, Prigozin had the confidence to act.

However, having just over a thousand people is not enough; to expand operations in Africa, manpower is far from sufficient.

Prigojin has a way.

He summoned his veteran subordinates who had extensive networks and asked them to gather all their trusted, capable, and skilled friends.

In this era, there were no mature PMC companies. Mercenaries on the African continent basically fought independently, taking orders directly from their employers. Some reputable veterans would form small teams, with intermediaries taking on missions. The more lucrative jobs were all from the CIA and KGB.

However, recently the CIA has stopped paying salaries, and instead, teams that take on private jobs for the CIA have appeared on the market, which is somewhat disruptive to the market!

The US Congress is short of funds, cutting the CIA's budget in Africa but refusing to withdraw its intelligence network there. So what can the CIA do?

You're now a well-established intelligence organization; it's time to learn how to generate your own revenue.

As a result, the KGB successfully acquired a lot of intelligence from the CIA's "consulting agency for mercenaries," and also poached many of the CIA's outsourced informants who were trying to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

In this era, the most crucial thing for those in the mercenary business has never been advertising or posting notices; it's connections!

Behind every veteran is often a complex network of comrades and acquaintances. If you trust one person, you can trust the people they bring. So the veterans of Prigozin scattered and used their networks, one pulling in another, one leading another.

After two weeks, all the procedures were finally completed. Griffin Security Contractors was officially established in Cyprus.

Cyprus was chosen because this Mediterranean island nation is a convenient place—a security company registered there has no apparent connection to Moscow. It's just an ordinary commercial company doing security work, legal, neutral, and nobody can find fault with it.

After the company was established, Prigozin began to assemble his team.

Prigozin entrusted the core business to his three most trusted confidants.

These three men had all come with him from Afghanistan, and each had their own unique skills.

The first one is Colonel Vyacheslav Barannikov.

Barannikov was a man of few words, but his eyes would light up when he talked about equipment. He had an almost obsessive sensitivity to machinery—he could judge the condition of a tank just by listening to the sound of its engine; he could tell how many rounds a cannon could still fire by touching its barrel.

Prigozin entrusted him with the assessment and procurement of equipment technology, with a focus on vehicles and heavy weapons.

From now on, Barannikov will have the final say on what tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery Griffin wants to buy.

The second is Colonel Anton Yudintsev.

Yudintsev was the most intellectual of the three, and quick-witted. He graduated from Moscow State University and later studied in East Germany, specializing in communications and command and control—what the military calls C3I.

In modern warfare, whoever can transmit orders and grasp the battlefield situation faster and more accurately gains the upper hand. Yudintsev's job was to get the nervous system of Griffin's team running smoothly.

In addition, he was also in charge of evaluating aircraft – he was responsible for deciding which helicopters and transport planes to buy.

The third was Colonel Nikita Buyanov.

Buyanov was in charge of combat and infantry operations. He was both the head of infantry training and the officer in charge of operational and mission planning. Griffin's infantry training, combat tactics, and the procurement of individual equipment and logistics were all his responsibilities.

He knew what a soldier truly needed on the battlefield because he himself had risen through the ranks from the lowest ranks.

These three pieces together form the framework for a PMC to function.

Prigozin called the three of them together for the company's first core meeting since its inception.

“Brothers,” Prigozin said, “we are no longer the mercenaries in Afghanistan. We are now a company, and we are going to operate like a company.”

So he told the three people what Slava had told him—the Warsaw Pact would provide intelligence, cheap equipment, and "retired" officer advisors.

The money has to be earned by finding ways to get it from the local governments in Africa, through minerals, diamonds, and oil.

A portion of the profits had to be shared with the Soviet Union, and they also had to help sell off the Soviet Union's old weapons.

After listening, all three understood the ins and outs of this business.

“Our first stop is Angola,” Prigozin said. “I’ll decide on the specifics of the battle once I have a clear understanding of the situation.”

"Let's get the basic supplies ready first. Barannikov, you take care of the heavy equipment; Yudintsev, you handle the communications and transport stuff; Buyanov, you train the men and ensure the individual soldiers have adequate equipment and logistics."

After receiving their orders, the three men dispersed.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The matter of preparing for the family fortune is quite a lively affair.

Barannikov's demand for heavy equipment mainly came from the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union had plenty of old weapons in stock—weapons that had been phased out by the Soviet Army but were perfectly adequate for the African theater.

T-54 and T-55 armored personnel carriers, artillery of various calibers... These things were obsolete scrap metal to the Soviet army, but in Africa, they were still crucial weapons that could decide the outcome of a battle. Barannikov had the privilege of directly entering the Soviet military's warehouses to select equipment.

He was very selective—even among the T55s, he could pick out the few in the best condition from a pile and kick back the ones that were about to fall apart.

Because Barannikov could personally inspect the quality of the equipment, his name soon became known in the African secondhand arms market, with people saying that his goods were of the best quality.

Yudintsev was busy with communications and aircraft. East Germany provided a batch of communications equipment, but aircraft were more troublesome—helicopters and transport planes were difficult to obtain and expensive.

Yudintsev traveled to many places, evaluated various types of aircraft, and selected those that were cheap, easy to use, and easy to maintain.

After all, Griffin was going to fight in a godforsaken place like Africa, and there was nowhere to repair the planes if they broke down, so he preferred the sturdy, durable old ones to those delicate new gadgets.

Buyanov came to recruit soldiers.

Griffin's core consisted of over a thousand Russian veterans, but these were certainly not enough to fight in Africa; a large number of local African soldiers needed to be recruited to form the main body of the force.

Africa has a richer pool of soldiers than one might imagine.

This continent, ravaged by the Cold War for more than two decades, is full of people who are capable of fighting and willing to fight for money.

There were deserters from the Angolan government army who had been trained by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and were familiar with both Soviet-made equipment and the local terrain. Although the government army was generally incompetent and had many deserters, this ironically became a window for Griffin to recruit people—Angola soldiers who had defected from the government army but had received formal training were a natural source of recruits.

Buyanov was in charge of selecting people from the "slippery fish in this rotten army," specifically choosing those who were truly capable.

There are also the Katanga people. This is a group of exiled armed individuals from Katanga province in Zaire, who oppose the authoritarian regime in their home country and have been used in Angola since their exile.

These people have combat experience, have cooperated with the Angolan government forces, and hate the Western-backed dictatorship—making them naturally close to the Soviet Union in their stance.

The Katanga people also face external enemies; they yearn for independence and to establish the Republic of Congo, but South Africa has been interfering in the surrounding region, and the war will never end.

There are also Cuban veterans of the liberation movement trained throughout Africa.

Since the 1960s, Cuba has been training armed forces all over Africa—training one group in one country and another in another. Over the past two decades, the continent has been filled with a large number of trained veterans who, for various reasons, have been demobilized and have nowhere to go.

Some of the liberation movements have long since achieved their goals, but the fighters from those movements were not incorporated into the new regimes and instead became armed vagrants adrift in various southern African countries.

These men are among Buyanov’s best recruits – they have the foundation, and they’ll come if given a stable paycheck, protection, and a better future than they are in now!

When Buyanov recruited these African soldiers, he knew very well that these people were not there for their faith.

They don't believe in communism, nor in any ideology. They came because they couldn't survive in their own countries, because the endless civil war had turned them into armed vagrants without a home, and because Griffin offered them better conditions than they were in their current situation!

In a fate swept up by a greater force, this was the decision they made in order to survive.

Buyanov didn't care what they believed; he only cared whether they could fight.

As for ideology, let's see what General Prigozin has to say.

With his three trusted confidants each making their own arrangements, Griffin's team gradually took shape. More than a thousand Russian veterans served as the core and backbone, while several thousand recruited African mercenaries formed the main force, supplemented by low-cost tanks, artillery, and communication equipment provided by the Warsaw Pact.

As Prigozin watched the team take shape, he felt confident and it was time to decide how to play.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

While Griffin was preparing for the match, Moscow was also paving the way for them.

In early March, Slava contacted Fidel Castro in Cuba.

The Soviet Union hoped that Cuba would provide Griffin with manpower support—by allocating a portion of Cuban elite veterans fighting in Angola to Prigozin. In return, the Soviet Union promised Cuba a batch of aid: food and canned goods.

This was something the Soviet Union could absolutely boast about in its greatly improved supply of goods.

Castro felt somewhat awkward when he received this request. For years, Castro had harbored resentment towards the Soviet Union. From the 70s onward, the Soviet Union gradually shifted towards conservatism and retrenchment in the Third World—a move that greatly displeased Castro, who was determined to export revolution and champion internationalism.

In Castro's view, the Soviet Union, as the elder brother of socialism, should have been more proactive in supporting the liberation movements around the world, but instead, the Soviet Union became increasingly timid and calculating!

Previously, there was Lao Zhong stirring up trouble in the Third World against imperialism, but now that the Soviet Union at least maintains a military presence, Lao Zhong simply called it quits and cuts off much of the aid to communist parties in other countries.

The current international situation makes him feel that Cuba is carrying the ideological torch that the Soviet Union failed to carry out.

Now, the Soviet Union suddenly wants to return to the Third World!

This should have pleased Castro. But the way the Soviet Union returned made him uncomfortable—instead of sending a large-scale regular army to export revolution, the Soviet Union created a "military contractor" called Griffin.

A company, a group of mercenaries paid to do their jobs, exporting revolution?

In Castro's view, this was somewhat...not pure enough.

How could a revolution be entrusted to a group of profit-driven, bloodthirsty soldiers? The Cuban forces sent to Angola were 50,000 warriors with genuine faith, fighting for the ideals of internationalism. He called it "Operation Carlota"—an expedition named after a female slave who had led a slave revolt, carrying the historical obligations of the Cuban nation.

The Soviet Union sent a group of mercenaries who were there for money and for the minerals in Africa!

But Castro eventually agreed.

Ultimately, Griffin was going to fight in South Africa, against that reactionary white regime that practiced apartheid! And opposing apartheid was a cause that Castro truly believed in and was willing to shed blood for.

On this matter, he shared Griffin's goal. Whether they were regular troops or mercenaries, Castro was willing to lend a hand as long as it helped to combat the apartheid regime!

Castro then transferred command of a group of elite Cuban veterans fighting in Angola to Prigozin.

However, he made one request: he hoped that Prigozin could cooperate with the Cuban regular army to launch an attack on the rebels in southeastern Angola—namely, the National Alliance for the Complete Independence of Angola (UNITA).

For years, Cuba and the government forces have wanted to completely destroy UNITA, which is entrenched in the southeast corner of the country. Castro hopes that Griffin's new force will join them in taking down this tough nut to crack.

Prigozin took over command from the Cuban veteran, but he did not immediately agree to Castro's established tactics.

Because he needed to figure out how to fight Angola first.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Angola was once Portugal's largest colony in Africa.

The Portuguese had occupied this area since the late 15th century, forcing labor, distributing fertile land to Portuguese immigrants and driving out the locals. After World War II, the wave of independence movements swept across Africa, but the fascist regime ruling Portugal refused to relinquish its hold.

Against this backdrop, three liberation movements, each with its own ethnic roots, emerged in Angola.

One was the MPLA—the People's Liberation Movement of Angola. It operated under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and was rooted in the urbanized population and mixed-race elites around the capital, Luanda. It was supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

One is the FNLA—the National Liberation Front of Angola. Its roots are almost entirely in the Bacongo people of the north. It is essentially an ethnic movement, with many members coming from Katanga who hope to establish the Republic of Congo.

Another one is UNITA—the National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola. Its leader is Savinbi, who received training in China in 1966 and followed the Maoist line, but later betrayed his beliefs and switched to an anti-communist stance in order to gain Western support!

It attracted the Owenbendou people, who are from the largest highland in central and southern Angola, and it is supported by South Africa and the United States.

Slava had previously told Prigozin that the social conditions in Africa are different from those in Europe and Asia. Because many parts of Africa are still in backward tribal societies, and because Europe deliberately divided Africans when it colonized Africa, most of the conflicts in Africa are not ideological disputes, but ethnic disputes!

These ethnic groups, deliberately divided and instigated by the colonizers, were forcibly placed into the same colonial country, not because of any shared identity, but purely because of the border lines drawn arbitrarily by the Portuguese colonizers!

On the surface, the Angolan civil war is an ideological battle between socialism and pro-Western countries, but at its core, it is a blood feud between several tribes.

In 1974, the Carnation Revolution broke out in Portugal, in which left-wing military officers staged a coup that overthrew the government, and the new Portuguese government decided to relinquish all its colonies.

The three parties had agreed to form a transitional government and achieve peaceful independence, but the power-sharing arrangement immediately collapsed—whoever controlled the capital on Independence Day would be recognized by the international community as the legitimate government.

Taking advantage of its geographical location, the Angolan People's Liberation Movement quickly drove the other two organizations out of the capital.

Then the major Cold War powers intervened fully. The Soviet Union and Cuba supported the Andersen Liberation Army, with Cuba's intervention being particularly dramatic—Castro acted unilaterally, deciding to send troops despite explicit Soviet opposition. The United States, through the CIA, supported the remaining two. South Africa, meanwhile, directly invaded, aiming to seize the capital, Luanda, before Independence Day.

After this battle, the Angolan National Liberation Front was defeated in the north and driven to Zimbabwe and Katanga, where it never recovered.