The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin August of last year didn’t end the Wagner Group. The mercenary enterprise is now run by Yevgeny’s son Pavel Prigozhin, and is heavily involved in fighting for Russia’s client states in Africa.
Remember Africa’s League of Assholes, the three Sahel nations (Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso) run by military regimes backed by Moscow mentioned in a LinkSwarm a week back? Yeah, Wagner’s fighting for them. And in Mali, a column of them using the same naked convoy tactics that have gotten so many Russians killed in Ukraine just got a bunch of them killed in Mali.
Mali’s army and its Russian allies suffered a major setback and significant losses on Saturday while fighting separatists in the country’s north, a spokesman for the rebels told AFP.
The West African nation’s military leaders, who took power in a 2020 coup, have made it a priority to retake all of the country from separatist and jihadi forces, particularly in Kidal, a pro-independence northern bastion.
Wait, weren’t the French fighting Jihadis in those countries as well? Yep. It’s Africa. Jihadis tend to fight whichever government is in power if it’s not their government, and the French were fighting less as a noble western anti-Jihad enterprise than to protect their own business interests in “former” colonies. In a proxy fight between France and Russia, the French are still marginally the good guys.
Plus: It’s Africa. There are factions within factions, and sometimes Jihadis on both sides of a conflict.
“Azawad fighters are in control in Tinzaouaten and further south in the Kidal region,” said Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for an alliance of predominantly Tuareg separatist armed groups called CSP-DPA.
“Russian mercenaries and Malian armed forces have fled,” he added. “Others have surrendered.”
He also shared videos of numerous corpses of soldiers and their allies.
Here’s one showing the aftermath of the attack on the Wagner column.
I started working on this piece late last night, and when I woke, up I found Suchomimus just up out a video on the same subject:
He says the vehicle shown seems to be a Chinese-made MRAP. Supposedly they also took out an Mi-24 Hind helicopter, and will be transferring Wagner prisoners to Ukraine’s control.
Back to the story:
“The Malian army has retreated,” a local politician told AFP, citing at least 17 dead in a provisional toll.
“The CSP people are still in Tinzaouaten. The army and Wagner are no longer there,” he said, referring to the Russian mercenary group.
Fighting also took place further south toward Abeibara, the politician said.
A former United Nations mission worker in Kidal said: “At least 15 Wagner fighters were killed and arrested after three days of fighting” adding that “the CSP rebels have taken the lead in what happened in Tinzaouaten.”
Mossa Ag Inzoma, a member of the separatist movement, claimed that “dozens and dozens” of Wagner fighters and soldiers had been killed and taken prisoner.
Fighting on a scale not seen in months broke out Thursday between the army and separatists in the town of Tinzaouaten, near the border with Algeria, after the army announced it had taken control of In-Afarak, a commercial crossroads in Kidal.
It’s tough to say what Russia hopes to accomplish in the Sahel, other than tit-for-tat revenge against France for backing Ukraine. Knowing the French, this is just going to piss them off and make them more determined than ever to keep backing Ukraine.
As shown throughout history, and especially from the Reagan Doctrine up through Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgencies are easy and cheap to fund, but counterinsurgencies are time-consuming, expensive, and difficult. Thus far, Russia has proven itself absolutely incapable of winning the one major war it’s embroiled in on its own borders, and all its ill-advised troop support of various African client states seems to be accomplishing is wasting time, efforts and resources it can ill afford to squander.
Update: Geolocation in a new Suchomimus video show the Wagner column was hit 70km south of Tinzaouaten, heading south:
He suggests the column was hit twice, in two separate ambushes, one that cause it to retreat, and the second that finished it off after they retreated.