Russia’s Wagner Group is being withdrawn from Mali after a three-and-a-half-year deployment with a mixed record of battlefield successes that have come at enormous civilian cost.
Wagner’s replacement with the Russian Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps may signal a change in Kremlin tactics. Regardless of the tactics used, the Russian military buildup in Mali suggests that expanded military operations against insurgent and terrorist groups are imminent.
New Russian-Malian partnerships in the energy and mining sectors have accompanied changes in security tactics.
Mali’s relationship with Russia is entering a new stage as the Kremlin withdraws the last members of the Wagner Group, a private military company (PMC), and signs bilateral agreements on trade, development, and the construction of a Russian-designed low-power nuclear plant in Mali (TASS; Business Insider Africa, June 23). Russia and Mali signed the new agreements during Malian President General Assimi Goïta’s second visit to Moscow (Maliweb.net, June 17).
Mali’s military government has also announced a partnership with the Russian Yadran Group to build a gold refinery near the capital of Bamako. The move is in line with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s declaration that Russia intends to focus “primarily on economic and investment interaction … This also corresponds to and extends to such sensitive areas as defence and security” within African countries (Al-Jazeera, June 9).
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