Why Was Wagner Group Boss at Putin's Africa Summit?

Readers of the Financial Times got a major jolt Friday morning when they saw what was on page one: a photograph of a beaming Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, shaking hands with President Freddy Mapouka, chief of protocol for the president of the Central African Republic in St. Petersburg, Russia — less than a month after the insurgent launched a mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The presence of Prigozhin — widely reported to be in exile in Belarus following the reported mutiny — in Russia raised immediate questions as to just what the uprising against Putin was all about.

How serious, for example, was the Wagner Group's uprising against Putin, which concluded with the Russian strongman's denunciation of the insurgents and Prigozhin and many of his team settling in Belarus?

Before the photograph, there have been published reports of Prigozhin spotted in Russia.

The photo, in fact, was taken at the 21-member African summit hosted by Putin.

According to the FT, the photo was taken at a hotel in St. Petersburg owned by a relative of Prigozhin and posted on Facebook by Dmitry Syty, considered one of the warlord's top lieutenants.

The Wagner Group has been especially critical to the survival of Mapouka's boss, President Faustin-Archange Touadera. The Central African Republican, in turn, has been a major base of operations for Wagner's incursions in embattled African countries such as Sudan and, most recently, Niger.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.