Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 7, 2026
1 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
CAR's president invites Putin, strengthening Russia's influence in the region, especially in security and mining sectors.
MOSCOW, Jan 7 (Reuters) - The newly re-elected president of the Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Touadera, has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit his country, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.
Moscow has become a key ally of Touadera in recent years, with CAR in 2018 becoming the first West and Central African nation to bring in Russia's Wagner mercenaries as the chronically unstable nation sought to fend off several rebel groups.
Touadera, in power since 2016, won a third term in office, provisional results showed this week, securing an outright majority in the presidential election held on December 28.
In a video interview with TASS, Touadera called Putin a "great leader" and said the Kremlin chief was "very attentive" to relations with Bangui.
Commenting on preliminary election results showing Touadera in the lead, the Wagner Group wrote on its Telegram channel: "We have no doubt that the chosen course of maintaining order and peace will prevail."
Touadera's victory is likely to further Russia's interests in the country, including in gold and diamond mining.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy PapachristouEditing by Andrew Osborn)
Mercenaries are private soldiers hired to serve in a foreign army or conflict, often for financial gain rather than loyalty to a nation.
Gold mining is the process of extracting gold from the earth, often involving various techniques such as panning, sluicing, and hard rock mining.
Diamond mining involves extracting diamonds from the earth, typically through open-pit or underground mining methods, and is a significant industry in several countries.
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