On Sunday, demonstrators supporting Brazil’s nationalist former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Congress and government buildings in Brasilia to overturn an election which brought leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power earlier this month.

The rioters ransacked political buildings — while parading the Brazilian flag with its motto ‘ordem e progresso‘, ‘order and progress’ — in a botched attempt to reverse the peaceful transfer of power.

The biggest assault on Brazil’s democracy in decades, news of Sunday’s uprising has sent shockwaves around the world. But what has most alarmed many are the echoes of the US uprising almost exactly two years prior, when supporters of Republican ex-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

The similar timing of the events has led commentators and analysts to draw comparisons between the two events. But are the uprisings as similar as they seem?

At a glance, it would certainly appear the two incidents bear an uncanny resemblance with each other.

The storyline they share is remarkably similar. In both cases, a far-right, firebrand president with a fondness for using Twitter, contests his loss in a democratic election, propagating falsehoods and conspiracy theories to his devoted supporter base. 

Upon the dawn — or eve, in the US — of his successor’s inauguration, such sentiment eventually morphs into a violent uprising which targets the very buildings at the heart of both nations’ democratic systems.

Windows are smashed, artwork and landmarks are damaged — in Brazil’s case, even its own 1988 constitution — all by demonstrators draped in their respective nation’s star-spangled flag.

At the heart of both uprisings lies a similar nationalist ideology which has a history of resisting democratic transfers of power. 

“A pathetic copy cat [sic] attempt at a coup by Bolsonaro,” were the words used by Argentine historian Federico Finchelstein, an expert in fascist history, to describe Sunday’s events.

Consequently, both Biden and Lula have fiercely condemned the demonstrators, labelling them as extremists and threats to their countries’ safety. The latter, however, went one step further, calling them “fascists” – a loaded word US leaders have generally hesitated to use.

Ultimately, both events see each country’s ousted leader somehow landing in the same place — Florida. While Trump may have found refuge in his mammoth Mar-a-Lago residence, Bolsonaro’s fate appears somewhat less glamorous, as the ex-President was allegedly spotted eating chicken wings at an Orlando KFC restaurant.

Nevertheless, while comparisons between Brazil and the US’s anti-democratic riots may be apt, key differences do remain.

It is worth noting the different timings of the two uprisings. The storming of the Capitol happened a fortnight before Biden’s inauguration, while Brazil’s uprising happened over a week after Lula took office. The former represented an attempt to hinder the transfer of power, the latter aimed to overturn it.

Brazil uprising also targeted another key — the Presidential Palace. The White House, where Trump still officially resided on 6 January 2021, remained untouched.

But perhaps the biggest different remains in the starkly different socio-political contexts which surround the events.

As a country whose democracy has not suffered from major upheavals over the past century, 6 January has come to haunt the US’s public memory as a particularly dark moment, one that is often the source of intense media and academic debates.

Brazil, on the other hand, has a more turbulent relationship with democracy, which itself was only formally reintroduced in 1985, after a 21-year military dictatorship. The century it leaves behind is punctuated with revolutions, coups and uprisings, and its history is one of greater political instability than the US.

The military itself has played a starkly different role in both country’s anti-democratic uprisings. Former members of the armed forces may have been implicated in the US Capitol attacks, but in Brazil, high-ranking military officials supported the pro-Bolsonaro protests that preceded the riots, albeit falling short of participating in Sunday’s riots themselves.

“I think it is fair to say that segments of Brazil’s military were encouraging what happened,” wrote US-based historian Rafael Ioris. “But when it came down to it, the armed forces were quiet.”

Such differences between both countries, in turn, could result in the aftermaths of both events looking quite dissimilar.

The US justice system took a hard-line approach in dealing with its own insurrectionists, hundreds of whom were sentenced. They were consequently condemned by much of the press — although the severity of the 6 January 2021 attacks remains more controversial among conservatives.

Lula may promise a similar iron-fist approach, telling reporters that “all the people who did this will be found and punished.” But as Brazil’s own attempted coup may involve individuals high up the country’s political food chain, whether such promises actually come to fruition remains to be seen.

The Wagner group, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, operates in dozens of countries and works with governments on military and political projects. The U.S. has long tracked the group’s activities across the world, particularly in countries such as Syria, where U.S. troops are stationed.

But the recent statements from American officials underscore the degree to which the administration is concerned about Russia’s reliance on the group and Wagner’s ability to shape events in countries where the U.S. and its allies hold business and diplomatic relationships.

The cables show how U.S. officials are tracking the movements and activities of Wagner on the ground in the Central African Republic and Serbia, and the extent to which the group poses threats to local forces and officials. While Wagner has for years operated in both countries, the cables provide fresh context to how the Biden administration is analyzing the paramilitary group’s increasing activity in politically turbulent countries.

“There’s been a growing focus on Russia’s relationship in Africa and in building a sphere of influence that really hasn’t existed since the end of the Cold War,” said Catrina Doxsee, the associate director and associate fellow for the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The use of private military companies, particularly as we’ve seen in countries with weak governance, ongoing security challenges and enriched natural resources, sets [Wagner] up to either carry out … security agreements or to facilitate future diplomatic relationships with those countries.”

Prigozhin and Wagner have been under U.S. sanctions for years. But the U.S. has recently taken additional steps to try to control Wagner’s access to weapons. At the end of December, the Biden administration implemented additional export controls on Wagner, making it more difficult to access any equipment with U.S. technology.

NSC spokesperson John Kirby told reporters last month that because of sanctions and export controls, Wagner has looked for partners across the world to supply tools to support its operations — and North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery. The administration is also considering designating Wagner as a terrorist organization, Bloomberg reported last month.

“There are a handful of different concerns that we have when we’re seeing them operate in a place like Africa,” Doxsee said. “A big implication is Russia’s ability to spread its own power projection and intelligence capabilities — not only by displacing Western military intelligence capabilities — but also [through] the pursuit of new basing rights and other opportunities that would give them access to strategically important locations.”

The Wagner group’s operations in Africa span various countries, including Madagascar and Libya. In recent years, the group has also ramped up activity in the Central African Republic. The group set up offices in the country in 2018, establishing the “Russia house” — a cultural center — in the capital of Bangui. It worked to train troops and protect President Faustin-Archange Touadéra.

Human rights groups have said Wagner may be responsible for executing, torturing and beating civilians in the country. The Kremlin denies any official link to Wagner.

“The U.S. government is concerned about the extent to which Wagner is interfering in sovereign countries’ internal politics, violating human rights, and robbing them of mineral wealth,” one senior administration official said. “There is significant evidence that Wagner’s harsh counterterrorism tactics in places like Mali are worsening the situation by creating more opportunities for extremist exploitation.”

In December, U.S. officials began tracking the fallout of an alleged attack on one of the Wagner group’s top leaders, Dmitry Sytii in the Central African Republic, according to the cables. Prigozhin claimed Sytii received a package that exploded in his hands, calling it a “terrorist attack.” He alleged the package came with a note indicating that the French were responsible.

But in the days following the incident, U.S. officials scrambled to determine if an attack had occurred or whether Wagner was spreading disinformation for political reasons — a tactic often used by the group, according to the cables. U.S. officials could not immediately determine if Wagner was attempting to make it look as though the French had attacked the group.

French officials have denied any involvement. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna reportedly called Wagner’s allegations “Russian propaganda.”

U.S. officials received varying information about the event, including that the attack may have taken place at a military base or the cultural center and conversely that Sytii was seen partying in Bangui in the hours after the incident allegedly occurred. Officials also heard that Sytii may have been hospitalized and lost three fingers in the blast but also that he may have been evacuated.

American officials raised questions about the timing of the news — it came shortly after unidentified aircraft targeted a cotton factory where Wagner troops were reportedly positioned. It also came one day after the departure of the French military and two days after a fire broke out at the European Union delegation’s headquarters in Bangui, one of the cables said.

“All worried that there had recently been a remarkable number of coincidences,” one of the cables said.

The administration is also tracking Wagner’s movements in Serbia and Belarus — a Russian ally that has staged Moscow’s troops to prop up the war effort in Ukraine. Reports of Wagner group operatives in Belarus surfaced in 2020. The government in Minsk announced that it had arrested 33 operatives working to sow chaos in the lead up to the presidential elections.

Since then, the Belarussian government, under the leadership of President Alexander Lukashenko, has grown closer to Russia.

Wagner has positioned people in Belgrade as well, and announced it had officially set up operations in Serbia at the beginning of December. Since then, it has launched influence operations to counter “activity against the Putin regime by elements of the Russian diaspora,” one of the cables said.

The group’s presence in Serbia comes as tensions continue to rise on the border of Kosovo. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić — who does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence — has ordered troops to move into combat-ready positions and has threatened to cross into Kosovo to protect Serbian people living there. The situation in Kosovo has worsened since November when authorities announced that ethnic Serbs would have to surrender their Serbian-issued license plates.

Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin attends the funeral of Dmitry Menshikov, a fighter of the Wagner group who died during a special operation in Ukraine, at the Beloostrovskoye cemetery outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Dec. 24, 2022.
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AP Photo

Meanwhile, Russia, aided by Wagner, continues to lose people on the battlefield in Ukraine, particularly in Bakhmut. The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank, assessed last week that Wagner’s forces are serving in a “chiefly attritional role” in the city and have “likely become degraded to a near-debilitating extent.”

“Russians have really poured a lot of effort into Bakhmut. It’s largely been a struggle fought by promotion in the Wagner group. [It] has largely been a battle fought with, quite frankly, convicts,” a senior administration official told reporters Wednesday. “In fact, we believe … that 90 percent of the casualties that he has suffered have been, in fact, convicts.”

American officials are planning additional actions against Wagner to limit its role in Ukraine. The U.S. has already sanctioned Prigozhin, Wagner and its network, but additional financial measures are likely forthcoming.