Is Africa Becoming a New Battlefront in the Russia-Ukraine War?

 

By Damilola Banjo, via PassBlue

 

Ukraine’s military intelligence recently claimed to have had a role in the massive ambush coordinated with Tuareg rebels that killed Russian troops operating alongside Malian armed forces in Mali, the Francophone West African country. The assertion has sparked fears that parts of Africa might become a proxy war zone for Russia and Ukraine.

As the war in Ukraine continues, President Volodymyr Zelensky is looking beyond the stubborn battlefield on his country’s front line for other victories. In Africa, the apparent success in Mali could be largely rhetorical, several analysts told PassBlue. Some of them say that Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack in Mali in late July, which reportedly killed 84 Russian mercenaries, to score a symbolic win against Russia but may not have been directly involved. The ambush took place in Tinzawatene, near the border with Algeria.

The massacre of the Africa Corps militias — many former members of the private Wagner Group fighting under the command of the Russian Defense Ministry — occurred about a week before Ukrainian troops made a sudden incursion in Kursk, Russia, near Ukraine’s northeast border. The Aug. 6 occupation remains underway.

“Ukraine saw a chance to strike at Russia in the disinformation war when they noticed that so many Russian mercenaries were killed,” said Ulf Laessing, director of the Regional Sahel Program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German political-party think tank that has an office in Mali’s capital, Bamako.

“There might have been some training or equipment provided to these Tuaregs rebels, but I do not think Ukraine was directly involved,” he added. “They just saw an opportunity to hit Russia and frame it as the aggressor sending mercenaries to Mali.”

The Tuaregs, a minority nomadic group in Mali, are organized under the National Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad and have aligned themselves with other Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The nomads live primarily in the north and have led a separatist movement since 2011. The UN Security Council sent a peacekeeping mission to Mali in 2013 to help stabilize the country as it fought with French forces to push back the Tuaregs and other insurgents. The mission left Mali in December 2023, at the demand of the Malian military government, which has been in control since 2021.

Yet the Tuareg rebels controlled northern Mali for more than a decade before the Malian army, with the help of Russian militias invited by interim President Col. Assimi Goïta in 2021, launched an offensive soon after the UN mission left. The push drove the rebels out of Kidal, and subsequently the Russians may have seized control of Mali’s largest artisanal gold mine.

Experts said that Russia’s aim in Mali and other parts of Africa facing internal conflict or armed insurgency is to gain access to their vast deposits of gold and other minerals and to counter Western influence.

Russia’s strategy has allowed the Kremlin to evade Western sanctions and help fund its war in Ukraine. The Blood Gold Report, a research program based in Washington, found that Russia has earned more than $2.5 billion from gold trade in Africa since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Curiously, recent media reports said that six Polish nationals who were protesting in northern Nigeria and waving Russian flags were detained by authorities. Nigerian protesters in the region were also carrying Russian flags. But Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told PassBlue that the group of “six African Studies students and their lecturer from the University of Warsaw, who were detained in the city of Kano in the north of Nigeria, are safe and in good health.” The Poles did not say why the students were holding Russian flags.

Specialists of the region have questioned the likelihood of the Tuaregs working with Ukrainians in any major way. Yet Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian intelligence agency, boasted on national television on July 29 that Ukraine had assisted the Tuareg rebels, who are also known as the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD), in Kidal to attack Russian troops fighting with Malian soldiers to eliminate Al Qaeda and other jihadists. The attack reportedly killed at least 47 Malian soldiers and 84 Russian mercenaries, according to the Tuaregs.

Yusov’s comments drew the ire of the Malian government, triggering concerns elsewhere in the Sahel region that the Russia-Ukraine war is spilling into the continent. (Ukrainians have already fought Russians in Sudan.) Although Kyiv attempted to backtrack, Yusov’s claim set off a diplomatic row that is threatening to undo Ukraine’s efforts to build multilateral relations in Africa, a foreign policy priority of Zelensky’s. Since the start of the 2022 war, he has tried to expand Ukraine’s diplomatic presence in Africa to counter Russia’s influence and possibly block its access to the continent’s resources used to fund its war chest.

The continent’s 54 countries have mostly avoided taking sides in Russia’s war in Ukraine. The neutrality extends to nearly half of African countries abstaining from the UN General Assembly resolution in March 2022 condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, 24 and 27 African countries, respectively, abstained from an Assembly resolution suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council and a resolution demanding Russia to pay war reparations to Ukraine.

Laessing said that Ukraine underestimated Mali and its relationship with Russia. “It totally miscalculated,” he said. “By backing the Tuareg rebels, Ukraine has prompted countries like Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, which have strong ties with Russia, to take a tougher stance against Western countries that criticize them.”

Mali and Niger, another West African country led by a military government after a coup in 2023, announced that it was also cutting diplomatic ties with Ukraine. It said that it is doing so in solidarity “with the government and people of Mali.”

The Ukraine foreign ministry said in a statement on Aug. 5 that the decision of Mali to break off diplomatic relations with Ukraine is “short-sighted and hasty.”

Similarly, Senegal summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to question its government’s involvement in Mali. The Ecowas Commission, the main body of the Economic Community of West African States, or Ecowas, expressed its “strong disapproval” of Ukraine’s attack on Russian mercenaries aiding Mali in its fight against the Tuaregs.

The chargé d’affaires of the Mali mission to the UN, Yaya Habib Sissoko, sent a letter to the UN Security Council’s rotating president on Aug. 5, stating its intent to cut ties with Ukraine and requested that its letter be distributed to other Council members. “Mali considers support for Ukraine as support for terrorism,” the letter to the Council president, Michael Imran Kanu of Sierra Leone, said. It was translated from French to English.

The letter did not call for a Security Council meeting, and Russia, as a permanent member, may be blocking a session to keep the humiliating attack out of the wider public view. The Russian mission to the UN nevertheless held an open meeting on Aug. 13 focusing on Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk.

Laessing said that taking responsibility for the ambush was a mistake by Ukraine as it was trying to strengthen relations in Africa. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had just concluded a tour of Malawi, Zambia and Mauritius to drum up support for Ukraine, including possible grain exports to the countries.

The Kremlin has positioned itself as a viable alternative to Western powers as they are increasingly clashing with African leaders seeking more egalitarian relationships. Mali expelled the French in 2022 based on accusations of neocolonialism and paternalistic policies.

Niger more recently asked American troops, who have been combating Islamic State and an Al Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), to leave. Niger is now using Russian mercenaries to fight the insurgency.

Burkina Faso, the third member of the newly formed Alliance of Sahelian States, which also includes Mali and Niger, has also rekindled its post-World War II relationship with Russia as it dropped out of Ecowas. Although there are no reports of the Wagner Group or Africa Corps operating in Ouagadougou, Burkina’s capital, Russian symbols and language are conspicuous throughout the city.

Security analysts suggest that Russia perfected its blueprint for activities in Africa in the Central African Republic. The Wagner Group entered the country in 2018 to help fight rebel groups at the request of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. The militia — now the Africa Corps — also provides security to the president, along with the UN peacekeeping mission, Minusca, and the president’s own elite forces.

Analysts told PassBlue that while Ukraine might have scored a symbolic victory by killing Russian mercenaries in Mali, it is unlikely to carry out a multifront war with Russia.

Ryan Cummings, a senior associate of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that Ukraine may have intended to signal to Russia that it can engage in proxy warfare as far away in Africa, but there is no evidence that Kyiv provided major support to the rebels.

“I remain skeptical about Ukrainian involvement in Mali, particularly given that Tuareg militias are well resourced and have high levels of localized intelligence,” Cummings said. “They would not necessarily need external assistance to inflict the casualties they did.”

Russia is suggesting that Ukraine is aligning itself with terrorists in Africa. “Kyiv’s cooperation with terrorists comes as no surprise,” said Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry. “Unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield, the Zelensky criminal regime decided to open a second front in Africa, indulging terrorist groups in Russia-friendly states on the continent.”

But Ukraine may be borrowing from Russia’s playbook, experts say.

Media reports last year alleged that Russian mercenaries were arming the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces in Sudan’s civil war. In response, Ukraine reportedly allied with the SAF. A CNN investigation later suggested that Ukrainian special services were likely behind a series of drone strikes near Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, against the RSF.

However, experts also note that it is unlikely that Ukraine and Russia want to engage in a proxy battle in Africa. Jane Boulden, who specializes in international relations and security studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, said that Ukraine is barely winning the war at home and cannot sustain another front on another continent.

“It would be counterproductive to expend resources elsewhere in any significant way,” Boulden said. “It’s not a good public image for Ukraine. So there’s not a lot of overall gain, no matter which context we put it in.”