Converging Crises: Failed Brazilian Coups, Wagner Defeats, and Escalating Unrest

Over the course of recent weeks, a convergence of geopolitical crises has emerged across multiple continents, underscoring systemic vulnerabilities within both democratic and authoritarian systems. In Brazil, a series of bombshell indictments have implicated former President Jair Bolsonaro and dozens of co-conspirators in two attempted coups against the nation’s democratically elected leadership. Meanwhile, the Russian Wagner Group has suffered another embarrassing and lethal ambush in the African Sahel nation of Mali, raising profound doubts about the mercenary group’s capabilities following a devastating defeat in July. Concurrently, the Philippines is witnessing an unprecedented and highly volatile clash between its two most powerful political dynasties, while China grapples with a sudden surge of mass casualty attacks driven by economic malaise and exacerbated by systemic state censorship.

The Sweeping Indictments Against Jair Bolsonaro and His Inner Circle

Over the course of the last few weeks, a series of bombshell indictments have implicated former President Jair Bolsonaro and dozens of co-conspirators in not just one, but two attempted coups within South America’s largest democracy. Bolsonaro served as Brazil’s thirty-eighth president from 2019 to January 1, 2023. As a right-wing conservative figure, his leadership was marked by broad populist appeal.

Bolsonaro lost a tightly contested 2022 re-election bid to his successor and Brazil’s thirty-ninth president, the left-wing figure Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had also previously served as president from 2003 to 2011. Following the election, Bolsonaro claimed widespread voter fraud, engaged in a number of suspicious acts, and departed the country. One week after his departure from office, on January 8, 2023, throngs of his supporters rioted across Brazil’s capital in an attempt to overthrow Lula and reinstate Bolsonaro.

For the better part of two years, Bolsonaro and many of his associates have been under investigation by the Brazilian Federal Police on suspicion that they attempted to overturn the results of the lost election and plan a coup. On November 21, Bolsonaro and thirty-six co-conspirators were formally accused of plotting a coup d’état to violently dismantle the constitutional state. Among the other accused were Bolsonaro’s 2022 running mate, General Walter Braga Netto, as well as the former commander of the Brazilian Army, the chairman of Bolsonaro’s political party, the former ministers of defense, justice, and institutional security, and Bolsonaro’s longtime former adviser.

The 800-page report, filed by Brazilian federal police with the nation’s Supreme Court, was referred to the country’s prosecutor general, Paulo Gonet. It will be Gonet’s decision to either formally charge Bolsonaro with the alleged crimes and begin the trial process or terminate the investigation. Gonet, an appointee of incumbent President Lula, is widely expected to take up the investigation.

Former President Bolsonaro has vowed to fight the case in court, dismissing the findings as a result of creativity. Bolsonaro indicated to Brazilian media that his lawyer would review the accusation further before proceeding. However, Bolsonaro has a difficult track record in the Brazilian justice system.

Earlier in 2024, he was formally accused of embezzling 6.8 million Brazilian reais worth of jewelry—about 1.2 million US dollars—and falsifying COVID-19 vaccination data for himself, his daughter, and several members of his inner circle. In the summer of 2023, he was accused of abusing his power to cast unfounded doubts on Brazil’s electronic voting system and was barred from running for office again until the year 2030, a limitation he has insisted he will ignore in the 2026 election cycle. Brazilian legal experts describe the current situation as one where he will have a far harder time maintaining innocence against sweeping allegations that place him at the center of a large conspiracy.

Operation Green and Yellow Dagger and the Threat of Political Violence in Brazil

As Brazil processes the sweeping indictment against the former president, a second conspiracy of a more limited scope was revealed. On November 19, the Brazilian Federal Police arrested a total of five people: four members of Brazil’s military special forces and an agent within the federal police. Among the special forces personnel arrested was Mario Fernandes, a retired Brigadier General who had served as a deputy minister in Bolsonaro’s cabinet.

Fernandes was identified as the ringleader of the plot and had been previously found in possession of an outline of the plan that had been printed at Brazil’s Presidential Palace. The other three special forces operatives all held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Brazilian law enforcement disclosed that the coup attempt was named Green and Yellow Dagger, a reference to Brazilian national colors co-opted by Bolsonaro’s movement.

Green and Yellow Dagger was not simply a plan for a national coup; it was an assassination plot aimed at then-President-elect Lula just days before he took office, alongside the Vice President-elect and a prominent Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes. Justice Moraes was already in the process of investigating a group of Bolsonaro advisors who had spread disinformation to inflame violent mobs and attacks on political opponents. If successful, the five coup plotters would have shot or poisoned Lula and his Vice President-elect before killing Moraes via poison or an explosive device.

The conspirators then planned to place two figures indicted in the larger Bolsonaro coup allegation in command of the nation: General Walter Braga Netto and Bolsonaro’s national security adviser. Joined by an eleven-member crisis cabinet of military leaders, they hoped to hold a new set of elections to return Bolsonaro to power. The indictment alleges the co-conspirators were already following Justice Moraes and had taken positions in a parking lot to assassinate him before aborting the plan at the last moment.

In an ironic twist, Justice Moraes personally signed the arrest order to round up the five conspirators. According to the investigation report, higher-ranking Brazilian military officials may have known about the plan, with their lack of full support being the major reason the attack was never carried out. Justice Moraes quoted collected audio snippets of the coup plotters and other high-ranking members of the Brazilian military.

One former Army colonel, who was not arrested, stated in the leaked audio that it would either be a civil war now or a civil war later, urging others to ‘Speak to 01,’ a common reference to then-President Bolsonaro. Adding to the tension, an explosives attack outside Brazil’s Supreme Court on November 14 cast the nation’s predicament into sharp relief. A former city council candidate named Francisco Wanderley Luiz, identified as a member of Bolsonaro’s political party, threw explosive devices near the building before taking his own life.

The attack served as a bitter reminder that political polarization in Brazil is at an all-time high.

Wagner Group Mercenaries Suffer Repeated Ambushes in Mali

Shifting focus to the African Sahel, a large attack against Wagner Group mercenaries in Mali has left several dead and sowed doubts around the group’s ability to keep its promises to embattled dictatorships across the region. On its official social media accounts, an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist insurgency known as Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, announced that no fewer than six Russian mercenaries had been killed in an ambush. JNIM claimed it had ambushed a convoy of mercenaries under the employ of Russia’s Wagner Group on November 21, killing several fighters and burning their vehicles.

Malian security officials speaking with the foreign press confirmed that the attack had taken place in the Mopti region. Groups like Site Intelligence confirmed the incident, while Reuters and other sources bumped the estimated death toll to at least seven. Circulating imagery depicted the bodies of several dead soldiers near boxes of arms and ammunition, along with video showing white men in army fatigues lying dead around a military vehicle.

Nominally, the Russian mercenaries killed during the attack were members of Russia’s Africa Corps, an official arm of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Russia uses the Africa Corps to establish a presence in various African countries, most recently adding Equatorial Guinea to the list. However, the Mali detachment of the Africa Corps and many others are largely rebranded cells of Wagner Group mercenaries, reclassified and brought under more direct control following the group’s failed mutiny in June 2023.

Broadly speaking, the group has kept its traditions, uniforms, formations, weapons, and its lack of active oversight from Moscow regarding specific methods and tactics. While on assignment, Wagner forces secure and ship critical natural resources and cash back to Russia in exchange for protecting regime personnel and engaging in counterinsurgent operations. It remains a rather overt quid-pro-quo exchange: regimes pay Russia, and Wagner provides security guarantees.

The deaths of Wagner and Africa Corps operators while on assignment abroad draw significant international attention. Neither the group itself nor the Russian military makes a habit of publicizing their deaths, but such incidents routinely leak out, especially when social-media-savvy groups like JNIM announce the encounters to puncture Wagner’s aura of paramilitary prowess. This particular attack carries profound meaning, rooted in the fact that Wagner has taken more casualties in its several years in Mali than French and other international troops sustained over deployments lasting more than a decade.

Crucially, the November ambush harkens back to a far larger and more devastating assault against Wagner forces that took place in July of the same year.

Historical Context: Wagner’s July Defeat and Strategic Implications for the Sahel

The historical context of Wagner’s recent struggles in Mali is anchored by a massive defeat in July, when JNIM forces partnered informally with Mali’s transnational ethnic rebels, the Tuaregs, near the border with Algeria. During a severe sandstorm, Tuareg fighters attacked a Wagner column comprising armored vehicles, trucks, and tankers. The Wagner column was reportedly lured into unfavorable terrain following a string of seemingly easy victories in local firefights.

Driven off-road by improvised explosive devices, the group’s vehicles became bogged down in sand dunes. Across multiple days of battle in a narrow pass, Tuareg and JNIM fighters advanced from opposite sides, resulting in the deaths of at least fifty Wagner fighters, forty-six of whom were confirmed dead via analysis by the New York Times, alongside several dozen Malian regime soldiers. During that July attack, Wagner lost several significant fighters, including unit leader Sergei Shevchenko and pro-Wagner Telegram channel administrator Nikita Fedyakin, as well as veterans who had seen combat in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, and Chechnya.

Before the July ambush, the Wagner Group’s mercenaries and their families had regarded deployments to Africa as a relatively safe and highly lucrative option compared to the war in Ukraine. These deployments also came without accountability, as international groups have cataloged widespread torture, extrajudicial executions, and sexual violence by Wagner fighters. More importantly, Wagner had previously offered a near-spotless record in Africa to the regimes seeking cooperation agreements.

Aligning with Wagner was supposed to be a low-risk, transactional exchange where brutal, well-trained Russian mercenaries would dissuade local enemies from attacking. The strategic implications of these repeated defeats are severe for Wagner’s future in Africa. While the July attack might have been written off as an isolated incident, the November JNIM ambush converts lingering skepticism into outright concern.

To quote Ian Fleming: “Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.” Mali has not been a success story for the Wagner Group; civilians are reportedly more open to supporting JNIM and the Tuaregs because they view them as a less-bad option compared to Wagner. The mercenaries have been unable to prevent rebel advances across the countryside and lack the numbers to fight a sustained counterinsurgency on multiple fronts.

With possibly sixty or more fighters dead in the back half of 2024 alone, Wagner is on thin ice. While entrenched dictatorships in Equatorial Guinea or the Central African Republic are unlikely to sever ties, nations like Niger, Burkina Faso, and Libya may begin to reflect on the utility of their security agreements.

Dynastic Clashes, Assassination Threats, and the Historical Context of the Philippines

In Southeast Asia, the sitting Vice President of the Philippines has openly admitted to hiring a contract killer to assassinate the sitting President, exposing a volatile dynastic rift. The threat was issued on November 23 by Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte during an online news conference broadcast before dawn. Duterte made it clear that her statements were not a joke, leveling sweeping allegations of incompetence against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., widely known by his nickname Bongbong.

When asked whether she was concerned about her own security, Duterte responded that she had already spoken with someone. She stated, ‘I said if I’m killed, you’ll kill BBM’—referring to President Bongbong Marcos—‘Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke.

I’ve given my order, If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them. And he said, yes.’ The stated targets of the assassination plot include the President, his wife Liza Araneta, and the country’s Speaker of the House, Martin Romualdez, who is also the President’s cousin.

The immediate catalyst for Duterte’s press conference and shock revelation was a decision taken by the country’s House of Representatives to detain Vice President Duterte’s Chief of Staff, Zuleika Lopez. Lopez had been accused of obstructing a congressional inquiry investigating Duterte’s potential misuse of state funds during her tenure as Vice President and Secretary of Education. Following the detention, Duterte launched a tirade, accusing the Marcos administration of incompetence, corruption, and political persecution against herself and her family.

The explosion of tensions at the highest levels of the Philippine government shines a dramatic light on a rift that has been growing between the nation’s two most powerful political dynasties. The critical context behind the feud between Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte lies in the legacies of their respective fathers. Ferdinand Marcos Sr. served as the country’s tenth president and ruled as a dictator for twenty-one years, including a nearly decade-long period of martial law.

Surging to office on fraudulent claims of World War II exploits, Marcos Sr. presided over an administration that utilized large-scale violence, drove millions into poverty, and triggered a ruinous financial crisis. His son managed the exceptionally tricky dance of relying on his father’s legacy while whitewashing it to win the highest office. Conversely, Sara Duterte’s predecessor was her father, Rodrigo Duterte, who generated major controversy during his six-year term via an incredibly violent war on drugs.

Rodrigo Duterte personally admitted to killing criminal suspects and leading a death-squad campaign during his prior tenure as the Mayor of Davao. His daughter has held her own reputation as a firebrand, famously punching a sheriff in 2011. Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte ran on a combined ticket in 2022, winning by a massive margin, but the alliance quickly soured.

Sara Duterte resigned from her post as Education Minister in Marcos’ cabinet earlier this year, alleging that the justice system was being weaponized against her. The collapse of the Marcos-Duterte alliance carries deep implications for the Philippines’ future, setting the terms for the political landscape for decades to come.

Mass Casualty Attacks, Economic Malaise, and Escalating Censorship in China

In East Asia, China is dealing with a series of internal mass casualty attacks that have left the nation reeling and exposed the limitations of its vast security apparatus. Thus far, the attacks do not appear to be the work of a cohesive ideological organization, but rather a manifestation of systemic societal fractures. The most recent incident occurred on November 19, when a thirty-nine-year-old man, identified only by his surname Huang, drove a small SUV into a crowd of people near an elementary school in the central city of Changde.

While the driver was arrested and multiple students were injured, no fatalities were reported. However, a shroud of secrecy quickly fell over the event. Circulating footage on social media showing motionless victims and a crowd beating the driver was rapidly scrubbed by Chinese censors, marking an escalating campaign to suppress information as these attacks become commonplace.

Just three days prior, on November 16, a stabbing attack occurred in the eastern city of Wuxi at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology. A twenty-one-year-old man surnamed Wu utilized a knife to kill eight people and injure seventeen others. Detained on-site, Wu reportedly told police he was motivated by failing his examinations, an inability to graduate, and frustrations regarding low pay at an internship.

The Wuxi incident followed an even more massive attack on November 11 in the southern city of Zhuhai. A sixty-two-year-old man deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of people exercising at a sports complex, killing thirty-five people and injuring forty-three others. The perpetrator, who inflicted wounds upon himself prior to capture, was reportedly upset over the financial split of his divorce settlement.

The growing consensus among experts is that these mass casualty events are a devastating byproduct of economic, rather than ideological, issues. Author and researcher George Magnus of Oxford University’s China Centre noted that the rise in attacks speaks to a pattern rather than an aberration. China’s economy is slowing dramatically, youth unemployment is rising, and the likelihood of upward mobility has diminished.

Beijing psychotherapist Xiaojie Qin explained that a pervasive sense of societal unfairness and economic marginalization can push individuals with poor emotional regulation into extreme violence against random bystanders. While China grapples with the fatal byproducts of its economic malaise, it relies heavily on sweeping media censorship to maintain the status quo. Authorities argue there is preventative value in constraining news reporting to prevent copycat attacks.

Conversely, mass censorship heightens public skepticism regarding the truthfulness of the government’s official narratives. Senior Fellow Drew strategic Thompson of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies warned that censorship can exacerbate societal fears and distrust of the government.

The implications for Chinese social stability are profound. In response, local authorities have stepped up patrols, and the Ministry of Justice has convened to address marriage, housing, and wage disputes. Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally ordered officials to ensure social stability and strictly prevent extreme cases.

However, without resolving the underlying economic pressures and societal grievances, China’s current framework will likely struggle to stop future perpetrators from acting.

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