Russia is losing ground not only in Ukraine but in Africa as well, where its “Afrika Corps” is getting pushed out of Mali by Ukrainian-trained tribal separatists allied with Al Qaeda-linked insurgents whose growing pressures may threaten Putin’s recent acquisition of a naval base on the Red Sea.
Following weeks of intense fighting in which a convoy with 80 Russians was ambushed and slaughtered by guerrillas trained by Ukrainian special forces in the use of fiber optic guided attack drones, Afrika Corps units and regular Malian troops were forced out of the northern city of Kidal in mid-April after a Mi-8 helicopter carrying reinforcements to their besieged garrison was shot down.
It’s the most serious setback yet suffered by Russia in its efforts to form a block of military-ruled client states between the sub-Saharan Sahel region and the Red Sea coast of Sudan (see “Russia’s March to the Red Sea”), where Putin wants to base nuclear submarines.
Russia’s Sahel takeover was initially managed covertly through the Wagner Paramilitary Company operated by Putin’s onetime personal aide, Yevgeny Pregozhin, providing arms, mercenary teams, and military training to army juntas taking power in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and other regimes granting Russia bases and exclusive mineral concessions. A network of airfields was built in eastern Libya through military agreements with local strongman, Field Marshal Haftar, to serve as transshipment points for arms, gold, and diamonds moving between Russia and Africa.
Russia’s Defense Ministry took direct control of Wagner’s operations following Pregozhin’s 2023 assassination, merging the group under the military intelligence agency (GRU) and renaming it Afrika Corps as defense arrangements were formalized with African dictatorships. The Russians had some initial success in containing tribal separatists and Jihadist rebellions inherited from departing French forces, employing brutal tactics including systematic mass executions of entire villages in northern Mali.
But the rebel movements have been recently boosted by expanded training and assistance from Ukraine’s military intelligence unit (HUR), conducting covert operations against Russia throughout Africa. Al Qaeda-linked Syrian Jihadis, fresh from toppling the Russian-supported Assad regime, are also swelling the ranks of African Islamists.
Ukraine’s secret military operations are run out of its embassy in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, which borders northern Mali. Ukrainian operatives are in direct contact with the Tuareg Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), formed by separatist tribesmen from Berber populations straddling borders between Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, and Morocco. (RELATED: While Washington Looks Elsewhere, Ukraine Finds Leverage)
“What binds us most to Ukraine is that, like us, it is suffering Russian barbarism and imperialism,” declared FLA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, who says that FLA members have gone to Ukraine to “receive specialized training in the use of FPV drones.”
“They significantly strengthened their operational skills and, in turn, trained other fighters in this strategic area. Today, this technological mastery is fully integrated into our combat capabilities,” Ramadan told the Arab Weekly.
The FLA is passing on Ukrainian drone technology and operating skills to Al Qaeda allies of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the local ISIS chapter, Islamic State Sahel Province, coordinating attacks throughout Mali. Assaults have intensified in the capital, Bamako, where the defense minister, a reputed Russian “asset,” was assassinated by a car bomb last month.
JNIM’s drone use has increased since rebel Malian Army Col. Hussein Ghulam moved from FLA to JNIM in 2024, bringing his extensive knowledge of drone operations with him, according to the Africa Defense Forum. “Ukraine’s drone sharing with anti-Junta Tuareg rebels risks indirectly empowering extremists through fluid alliances and tech diffusion,” a former U.S. intelligence officer told The American Spectator.
Malian Prime Minister General Abdoulaye Maïga recently told the United Nations that Ukraine is “supplying kamikaze drones to terrorist groups.” The U.N. released a report last year tracing the movement of Al Qaeda-linked Syrian fighters to Africa.
According to the U.N. Security Council, “JNIM has reached a new level of operational capability to conduct complex attacks with drones, improvised explosive devices and large numbers of fighters against well defended barracks.” Its report predicted that JNIM would take Kidal.
Despite the recent reverses and the growing military demands of the Ukraine war, Russia has been reinforcing the Afrika Corps in Burkina Faso and Niger to counter expanded JNIM guerrilla activity. It’s also doubling down on support for puppet president Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic (CAR), who visited Moscow this month to be congratulated by Putin for his “victory” in recent elections boycotted by the opposition.
“Russia appears to be potentially expanding its military presence in the Sahel,” ex-U.S. Army special forces colonel Ron MacCammon, who has served in Africa, told The American Spectator. But the 2,000-strong Afrika Corps in Mali has been negotiating its withdrawal from Kidal and other exposed positions with FLA-JNIM forces, which are setting up bases in abandoned Russian-built facilities, according to news reports.
Russia has suffered a series of geopolitical setbacks over the past year. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that over 500 square kilometers of Russian-occupied territory have been retaken in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces are bogged down in widening “kill zones” dominated by Ukrainian drones and ground robots. Russia is being chased out of Latin America following the U.S. extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and the oil blockade imposed on Cuba by the Trump administration, which is threatening to arrest the Kremlin’s longtime local strongman Raúl Castro. Russia has lost control of its Mediterranean naval base in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime, and its air defense systems have proved largely ineffective against U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in Iran. (RELATED: Putin’s Stalemate, Trump’s Moment)
But Putin persists in his zeal to project Russian power, securing a 25-year lease for a naval base in Port Sudan, dominating Red Sea entrances to the Suez Canal, that would allow Russia to station 300 military personnel and up to four warships, including “nuclear powered vessels.”
Russia wrested the base agreement from Sudanese strongman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan by playing both sides of a genocidal civil war between his government and rebel paramilitary forces led by indicted war criminal Mohamed Dagalo. Russia initially backed Dagalo, supplying him with arms through the CAR. The flow stopped earlier this year as a key rebel stronghold fell to Burhan after he signed off on the Russian base.
The newly gained Red Sea position may become an empty project if Russia’s puppet junta falls in Mali and has a domino effect throughout its string of African satellites. Ukraine will need to exercise increasing political control over the groups it’s arming against Russia to prevent the Sahel from turning into Africa’s Afghanistan. Syria provides a more hopeful model where Al Qaeda-linked leaders who threw out the Russians have evolved into a pro-Western Islamic government that recently negotiated military agreements with Kyiv.
READ MORE from Martin Arostegui:
Moving Ahead on the Iran Front
The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine Comes Into Its Own
The Barcelona Censorship Club, Hosted by Pedro Sánchez
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
