At 8 p.m. on February 1, 2025, a total of 288 Romanian citizens landed at the “Henri Coanda” airport in Bucharest. All of them were mercenaries evacuated from the conflict zone around the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after international negotiations. The men went through numerous checks and were probably also questioned by the Romanian secret services.
The mercenaries of the “Romanian Prigozhin”
The arrivals are members of Horacio Potra's group. The 55-year-old man is called the “Romanian Prigozhin”, but not only because of his external resemblance to him. Since the 1990s, Potra has been operating as a mercenary leader in African and Arab countries. In late 2024, he again attracted attention for being close to the far-right winner of the first round of the Romanian presidential election, Calin Georgescu. Romanian authorities claim that Potra plotted a coup with him. Now, more details about his dubious activities are coming to light.
During the recent military clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of Potra's men were allegedly captured by the so-called M23, a notorious Congolese militia from the Tutsi ethnic group. Videos are circulating on social media showing the mercenaries being transported from the eastern Congolese city of Goma to Rwanda. Their journey back to Romania was organized by a UN mission in the region. The Romanian Foreign Ministry also participated in the mission, but a ministry spokesman declined to give more details to DW.
In the DRC, the men have long been called "Russians". For the locals, all European soldiers are considered part of the "Wagner" group - the private army led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash in 2023, after an open conflict between him and the Kremlin authorities. "Wagner" operated in many African countries, and after Prigozhin's death, his mercenaries were integrated into the Russian army.
Potra has been operating in Africa for a long time
Horacio Potra's army is called RALF - an acronym for "Romanians who served in the French Legion". Potra himself was part of the Legion in the 1990s, later guarding political and military leaders in the Middle East and Africa. Later, he trained special groups and guarded precious metal and diamond mines in Africa controlled by Romanian businessmen.
According to information from the investigative platform PressOne, in 2022 Potra began recruiting Romanian soldiers for Congo. The first 100 of them are responsible for guarding the airport in the capital Kinshasa and are training together with government forces. Among the mercenaries are Potra's former colleagues in the French Legion, but also employees of Romanian services and ministries.
Potra had problems with Romanian justice even before his identity became public. The Romanian special prosecutor's office DIICOT investigated him for drug and arms trafficking. In the end, he was convicted only of illegal possession of weapons.
Arrest, ties to Russia, threats to politicians
Links between Potra's group and "Wagner" have not yet been proven. However, according to the German publication TAC, in 2016 he received an order from Moscow to train the bodyguards of Faustin Archange Touadéra, president of the DRC since 2016. Potra himself does not hide his good relations with the Russian embassy in Bucharest. He can be seen in several photos from events at the embassy, even after the start of the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine in February 2022.
In December 2024, two weeks after the cancellation of the first round of the presidential election, Potra was detained near Bucharest. The charges against him are that he arrived in the Romanian capital to provoke riots over the annulled vote. Investigators found weapons, radio transmitters and a telescope in Potra's trunk. He has been under investigation ever since.
Potra himself has made disturbing and incoherent statements: according to him, Romania was ruled by “servants of globalism”. But instead of them, the police arrested people like him, which is why nothing in the country would change for the better - and “our children will have to go to war in Ukraine”. He indirectly threatened Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who resigned this week, by saying that he had come to Bucharest to “put the physics teacher (like Iohannis - editor's note) on reprimand for failing the mechanics test”.