Wagner’s failures shake Africa’s faith in Putin’s promises

The videos from Mali’s capital in September were starkly at odds with the assurances Russia’s Wagner group mercenaries had given the country’s ruling junta about improving security.

After Bamako’s residents were woken by gunfire at the airport and a gendarmerie academy, al-Qaeda propaganda showed gunmen setting fire to an aircraft and attacking a passenger terminal.

As many as 100 people died in the Sept 17 attacks, mostly young police recruits, when the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) seemed to easily penetrate two of the country’s most secure sites.

The jihadist attacks were an embarrassment for the junta, which took power partly because of public frustration at the former government’s feeble attempts to deal with a decade of Islamist insurgent violence.

But they were also a humiliation for its security partner, Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which had supplanted France and the United Nations in Mali by promising to bring safety where they had failed.

The Bamako attacks were not the only high-profile failure by Wagner, now re-christened Africa Corps, this summer in Mali.

In late July, a Wagner column was ambushed and massacred near the Algerian border in the mercenaries’ largest-ever defeat in Africa.

Video released by the insurgents on that occasion showed the bodies of scores of Russians lying around their looted vehicles.

Mali’s northern Tuareg rebels claimed to have killed at least 84 mercenaries, along with 47 Malian soldiers after surrounding them during a sandstorm.

This is not the image of Russian assistance that Vladimir Putin was pushing this week in a summit of African leaders in Sochi, when he offered new allies “total support”.

Yet experts in the Sahel region say the two incidents show that, more than two years after successfully edging out the West, Wagner is struggling to deliver on its promises.

Its failures have dented the group’s reputation for ruthless effectiveness and may give second thoughts to other countries considering turning to Moscow for help.

Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel programme at German think tank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, said: “Overall, they haven’t been able to achieve more than the French or the Europeans in improving security and some say they have made it worse because they are so brutal.

“From a marketing point of view it will be more difficult for Russia to present that they are really doing much, or are more successful than the French and the Europeans were.”

Far from being a mastermind adversary, two-steps ahead of the West, Wagner is militarily overstretched and struggling, in the Sahel at least, says Will Brown, of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

He said: “Take a step back and survey the field. Russia’s military operations around Africa are not succeeding, and Moscow is not setting itself up as a long-term partner for African governments.”

Mali has been in deep crisis since at least late 2011, when Tuareg separatists and radical Islamist factions took over Timbuktu, Gao and other towns across the north.

French troops stepped in to help, winning some successes at first, but then becoming bogged down in a difficult counter-insurgency mission marred by strained ties with the government.

The violence also spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, and all three countries have seen military coups in recent years as the crisis has grown.

The Kremlin, using Wagner as its foreign policy arm, used its disinformation machine to skilfully play on deep local frustrations with France, to push out the former colonial power.

All three nations have since tilted towards Moscow for help, relying to different extents on Wagner forces.

Wagner has about 1,500 mercenaries in Mali, 400 in Burkina Faso and as few as 100 in Niger.

Yet, the situation in the countries has been getting worse, not better, even before Wagner’s high-profile difficulties this year.

Across the three countries, deaths from political violence increased by 38 per cent in 2023, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), which tracks the conflict. Civilian deaths rose by nearly a fifth.

Wagner’s abuses against the population have also become a potent rallying cry and recruiting tool for the jihadists that fight them.

In the worst incident, the United Nations found “strong indications” that in March 2022, Malian troops and “foreign military personnel” killed or summarily executed more than 500 people in the village of Moura in the Mopti region of Mali.

After the massacre near the Algerian border, there have been rumours that Wagner has told Mali it wants to scale back more ambitious, exposed operations in remote areas.

‘Potent player’

“While Russia remains a potent player in parts of Africa, recent events in the Sahelian states have shown that Russian forces are deeply overstretched and losing credibility,” says Mr Brown.

Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, wrote earlier this month: “There may be an element of schadenfreude in watching Russia fail in a major play against Western interests and get caught in a mess, from which it can only extricate itself with a loss of face.”

But he cautioned that the failure risks turning the Sahel into a centre for extremist violence that could cause trouble further afield in West Africa.

Also, while the West may relish Moscow’s difficulties, Europe and America are not well placed to capitalise on them.

Relations between the Sahel and France are still broken, says Mr Laessing.

“Nobody wants them back and also other European countries are reluctant to do fighting stuff,” he said.

Donald Trump inherits a dwindling American diplomatic footprint in Africa, with short-staffed embassies. The continent is not thought to be high on the new president’s agenda.

Turkey boosts influence

Yet the number of nations who have piled into Sudan’s agonising civil war show that there is no shortage of middle-order powers vying for influence in the region, who could step forward instead.

Turkey, for example, could be in pole position after spending years boosting its influence and trade across Africa

Ankara has signed military co-operation agreements with more than 25 African countries, supplying Turkish-made weapons, including drones, helicopters, training aircraft and armoured vehicles.

Its hostile stance towards West-imposed sanctions on the military regimes of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali has also helped its ties with these nations.

“Turkey’s biggest advantage is its non-colonial past,” one diplomatic source told Reuters last month. “When anti-imperialist leaders are looking for new partners, they think first and foremost of us.”