Black Russians is an unofficial name given to a group of pro–government militias in the Central African Republic, recruited mostly from former Anti-balaka and UPC fighters by Wagner Group. The militias have been accused of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner, is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.