After President Faustin-Archange Touadera asked for help to deal with rebel groups in CAR in 2017, Russia’s Wagner Group arrived.

The group has since amassed significant security and economic power and according to investigative group The Sentry, it is believed to have laid a blueprint for state capture, with reports that Wagner has “created a complex network of operations to plunder diamonds, gold, and other natural resources” in CAR.

In 2019 the Kremlin-linked group began taking control of gold mines in the central and eastern parts of CAR. In recent years they have also extended northwards.

In October, less than a year after Sadock moved to Koki, locals told Al Jazeera that Russian paramilitaries, in an attempt to seize a gold mine, allegedly executed at least a dozen people who had been rounded up in the town where less than 5,000 people live.