Dozens of Russian mercenaries killed in rebel attack in Mali – the worst loss in Africa

CNN
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The video is as triumphant as it is gruesome. Rebel fighters with rifles slung over their shoulders walk between more than a dozen bodies scattered on the sand and rocks. Gunshots can be heard off-screen.

The scene is from another battle in the vast deserts of northern Mali – only this time the victims were Russians. At the end of the video, the camera pans to a bearded white man lying on the ground, apparently begging for mercy.

Another video shows several surviving white men kneeling in the middle of a wrecked car as guerrillas surround them. A pickup truck carrying militants approaches the men while others kick them in the head.

The Russian mercenaries were apparently attacked while accompanying Malian government troops on patrol last week near the Algerian border, a vast, inhospitable region where jihadist and Tuareg groups have long been active.

A Tuareg rebel group claimed responsibility for the attack, along with Al-Qaeda’s Sahel affiliate, JNIM (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin). They are known for their spontaneous collaboration and appear to have worked together to trap the Russian convoy.

JNIM claimed on Sunday that a “complex ambush” wiped out the convoy, killing 50 Russians and several Malian soldiers. It also released videos showing several burning vehicles and dozens of bodies in the area. A spokesman for the Tuareg militant group said some Malian soldiers and Russian fighters were also captured during the fighting.

According to some unofficial Russian Telegram channels, up to 80 Russians were killed.

This would be by far the worst loss for the Russian paramilitaries in their multi-year operations in Africa. The Kremlin is trying to use proxy troops to challenge Western influence in the Sahel region and Central Africa and to prop up unstable regimes.

In an extraordinary twist, a Ukrainian official claimed on Monday that Kyiv had provided intelligence to the militants.

Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), told Ukrainian television that “the rebels received necessary information that enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals.”

“We will not discuss the details at the moment, but there will be more to come,” Yusov added.

Sources linked to the Wagner Group, a private arms company active in Africa that is now part of what the Russian Defense Ministry calls the African Corps, said its fighters initially inflicted heavy losses on the insurgents.

But the militants had regrouped and Wagner’s command “decided to deploy additional forces into the combat zone.”

In the fighting, which lasted from Thursday to Saturday, the jihadists increased the number of massive attacks, “using heavy weapons, UAVs (drones) and suicide vehicles,” according to a Telegram account linked to Wagner.

According to the station, the last radio message from the Russian contingent late Saturday said: “There are still three of us, we are continuing to fight.”

According to a second Wagner channel, commander Sergei Shevchenko was among those killed in the battle.

Among the dead, according to several Russian Telegram channels, was one of Russia’s most popular military bloggers, Nikita Fedyanin, whose channel Grey Zone has over half a million subscribers.

Fedjanin’s death cannot be independently verified, but a photo from the crime scene bears a strong resemblance to him. Denis Korotkov, a longtime Wagner analyst, told CNN that the Gray Zone channel is no longer updated. “I believe the story is true; he probably did die.”

A former commander of the ambushed contingent said on Telegram that more than 80 men had been killed and more than 15 captured. The commander – call sign Rusich – said on Telegram that he was trying to convey a message to the Russian Defense Ministry. “I am ready to offer myself and all people who are ready to follow me absolutely free of charge to save the guys.”

Another social media account linked to Wagner spoke of a “difficult, unequal battle, as a result of which both our fighters and the Malian military died heroically.” He assured that whoever the enemy is, “global terrorism, the henchmen of Western countries or the raging Ukrainian heresy… we know that the Russian warrior will definitely continue on his way.”

There is no way to verify the exact number of Russian casualties (some Russian channels say the death toll is not 80), nor how many Malian soldiers were killed. Malian forces said on Friday that only two soldiers had died, but that clashes were taking place in a region that “remains a hotbed of concentration of terrorists and smugglers of all kinds.”

CNN has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment. Denis Korotkov, who works for the London-based Dossier Center, noted that “not a single official body of the Russian Federation has commented on this issue. Neither the Defense Ministry, nor the Foreign Ministry, nor the Kremlin have commented on the deaths of dozens of Russian citizens in clashes on the African continent outside the special military operation zone.”

Wagner and other Russian mercenary groups are used to losses – in recent years in Syria, the Central African Republic, Mozambique and Mali. The Wagner PMC lost hundreds and probably thousands of men two years ago when it captured the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut. And in Syria, a devastating attack by Russian mercenaries on an oil refinery five years ago left dozens of victims.

But outside of eastern Ukraine, Russian mercenaries have rarely suffered such a major setback.

Amid unrest in Mali, the Central African Republic, Niger and Burkina Faso, Russian elements, backed by the Kremlin, have intervened to usurp traditional French influence, beginning in the Central African Republic in 2018. The military regime in Mali turned to Wagner soon after seizing power in 2021.

After the death of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in a mysterious plane crash near Moscow last year, many of his fighters were integrated into a Russian Africa Corps under the command of Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov.

Yevkurov has occasionally visited Mali, and on its Telegram channel the African Corps announced in January that it wanted to increase its strength in Mali from 100 to 300 men.

The recent clashes also suggest that a coalition of militant groups is gaining strength in Mali and elsewhere.

Alliances between rebel groups in the Sahel region are constantly changing. However, Tuareg groups have sometimes joined forces with the Al-Qaeda offshoot in the region, the JNIM.

JNIM has claimed to have attacked Wagner contingents in Mali in the past. The organization has been particularly active recently in both northern Mali and several parts of West Africa. In the last week alone, JNIM claimed responsibility for five attacks in various regions of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist groups. One of these was an IED attack on a Russian vehicle in the same region of Mali as the most recent devastating attack.

In addition, the terrorist militia carried out a rare attack on a military base in northern Togo last week, expanding its radius of operations.

But it is only the ambitious attack on the Russian-Malian convoy near the Algerian border that will bring JNIM’s operations to a much wider audience.