The Wagner Group is both a private paramilitary firm, but also a tool of Russian foreign policy. Over the past six years, it's sent troops to five African states - most notably Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic. It operates in different ways in different places, depending on what the client wants and often depending what the Kremlin wants. But you can think of it as being a business, it sells its services to African governments.
Its leader is in exile and its future is uncertain. But the Wagner Group will be loth to abandon the influence and the cashflow that its murky African operations bring. The striking down of affirmative-action university-admissions policies in America may counterintuitively spur more-progressive and more-efficient alternatives (9:56). And the reinvention (again) of a beloved Chinese sweet treat (17:08).
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