Russia Is Failing in Africa: How the Sahel Project Unravelled

In July 2023, roughly two years after the coup that brought him to power, Malian junta leader Assimi Goita travelled to St. Petersburg for the Russia-Africa summit, his first international trip since seizing control of Bamako. After the proceedings, he sat down with Vladimir Putin for bilateral talks in which the Russian leader praised Moscow’s relationship with Mali. Goita returned the compliment, calling Putin a friend of his country and crediting him for his “personal involvement in establishing peace and stability in the Sahel.”

That praise rested on a single fact: the growing presence of Russian troops in Mali. Like many of his counterparts across the Sahel, Goita had expelled French forces in favour of Kremlin-linked mercenaries, first the Wagner Group, then the Africa Corps after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death. The decision was framed as a reclamation of sovereignty, a rebuke to the colonial powers that had exploited these nations, and, above all, the answer to a metastasising jihadist threat. By trading the effeminate French and the uncaring Americans for the hardcase Russians, the juntas promised to finally bring their security situations under control.

Care to guess what happened next? Across most of the Sahel, armed groups are now growing in power. Jihadists have overrun government positions across Mali, with their Russian protectors forced into humiliating retreats. In Burkina Faso and Niger, attacks and civilian fatalities are trending upward.

Key Takeaways

Russia replaced French forces across the Sahel as the promised solution to jihadist violence, but armed groups are now expanding rather than retreating.
In April 2026, Russia’s Africa Corps withdrew from Kidal after a coordinated insurgent attack, abandoning massive stockpiles of weapons and a downed helicopter roughly two-and-a-half years after staging a photo op to celebrate the city’s capture.
Russia’s deployments are tiny relative to the task: about 1,000 Africa Corps personnel in Mali (versus France’s former 4,000-plus) face more than 6,000 JNIM fighters, the Azawad Liberation Front, and the Islamic State Sahel Province across a country five times the size of the UK.
Malian forces and their Russian partners were linked to 77% of all civilian fatalities from targeted attacks in Mali in the two years before the latest assault, driving local populations toward the insurgents.
The Ukraine war is draining Africa Corps manpower, with the Kremlin redeploying troops from the continent to the front lines.
The United States, China, France, and Turkey are all positioning to fill any vacuum Russia leaves behind.
Russia may survive in the Sahel anyway, because its real job is not defeating jihadists but keeping juntas in power, a service the regimes still desperately want.

In short, Russia’s African project appears to be failing, and the question now is what that failure means, both for the Sahel and for the wider world.

The Road to Failure

On Sunday, 28 April, a day after one of the most well-coordinated terror attacks in Malian history, Russia’s Africa Corps confirmed that it and its Malian allies had withdrawn from the city of Kidal. A spokesperson for the armed insurgents said the two sides had reached an agreement allowing the Russians to leave. According to Radio Free Europe, the Russians abandoned massive stockpiles of weapons, equipment, and a downed helicopter on their way out, roughly two-and-a-half years after staging a photo op in the very same city to celebrate its capture from rebels.

The loss of Kidal was a massive blow to the government in Bamako. The city’s seizure in 2023 had been central to the junta’s narrative that it was restoring security. Its rapid return to insurgent hands shattered that story so completely that one senior Malian officer told Radio France International the Russians had betrayed them. He claimed the regional governor had warned the Russians three days before the attack and that they did nothing, adding that their departure appeared to have been negotiated in advance.

A Pattern, Not an Accident

The Kidal retreat is Russia’s biggest public failure in the Sahel, but it was neither unexpected nor unprecedented. Moscow has stumbled in Mali before. In September 2024, militants from the Al-Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, better known as JNIM, attacked Bamako for the first time since 2016, killing at least 50 Malian troops and setting fire to the presidential plane. Christopher Faulkner, an assistant professor at the U.S.

Naval War College, noted that the attack exposed Wagner’s limitations, given that the group’s primary base sat right next to the airport where the plane burned.

That same year, Wagner and the Malian army attempted a joint assault on insurgents in Tinzaouaten, in northern Mali. Tuareg separatist forces attacked them, forcing a retreat into territory controlled by JNIM, where the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists then attacked them in turn. Then came the siege of Bamako, in which JNIM spent months strangling the capital’s supply lines, burning fuel tankers and setting up checkpoints on the roads linking Mali to Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea, and Ivory Coast.

By October 2025, with the fuel crisis worsening, the government shut down schools and universities. That a capital under explicit Russian protection could be besieged by terrorists illustrates just how poorly Moscow was performing.

Beyond Mali: A Continent of Setbacks

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The failures extend well past Mali’s borders. In Burkina Faso, despite the presence of Russian forces, roughly 60% of the country remains in the hands of terrorists, according to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, and some analysts are already warning the entire state could fall. Far to the south, Russian troops deployed to Mozambique in 2019 to help fight Islamic State-linked insurgents in the north, only to withdraw after a friendly-fire incident killed 7 Russians and 20 Mozambican special forces. In Niger, despite a Russian presence, conditions have deteriorated so badly that the country ranked fifth in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, just one place behind Mali.

Mali remains the sharpest lens on this collapse for two reasons. It is the most recent, most public, and perhaps most devastating failure of the entire campaign; nowhere else have insurgents forced the Russians to abandon multiple positions and millions of dollars in equipment. And according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mali is Russia’s largest deployment in the Sahel and the biggest test for the Africa Corps since it was rebranded from Wagner and placed under direct Kremlin control.

For all its failures, including the botched 2019 Mozambique mission, Wagner did notch some successes, protecting the government of the Central African Republic and foiling a coup in Bangui. The Africa Corps has no such victory, only a string of defeats that will, at best, force Moscow to recalibrate and, at worst, drive a complete withdrawal from Africa.

The Numbers Game

So what went so catastrophically wrong? Start with the numbers, because “largest deployment” is relative. According to the investigative outlet The Sentry, only about 1,000 Africa Corps personnel are deployed in Mali. For comparison, France once had more than 4,000 troops there, and even that larger, better-resourced force struggled against the insurgents, though Paris’s problems look like small potatoes next to what is unfolding now.

Those 1,000 Russians, alongside the Malian army, are expected to fight more than 6,000 JNIM members, and that is before factoring in the Azawad Liberation Front, the Tuareg ethno-nationalist group that joined JNIM in the latest attack, and the Islamic State Sahel Province. Mali is roughly five times the size of the United Kingdom, and 1,000 troops cannot be everywhere. The insurgents understand this.

All they need do for a measure of success is monitor where the troops will be, which they have proven capable of doing, and strike somewhere else entirely. And if 1,000 troops struggle in Mali, consider Burkina Faso, where only about 100 have been deployed, compounding every problem already described.

The reason for these thin deployments is obvious. Russian forces are fighting and dying in Ukraine in eye-watering numbers, and the Ukrainian meatgrinder has become so all-consuming that the Kremlin has been forced to pull troops out of Africa and send them to the front.

Killing the Population You Came to Protect

Away from the numbers lies a second, arguably more corrosive problem: the conduct of Russian troops and their African allies. Research from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies found that Malian security forces and their Russian partners were linked to 77% of all civilian fatalities from targeted attacks in Mali during the two years before the latest assault. The men supposedly sent to stop the jihadist violence were killing far more civilians than the jihadists ever did.

In December 2025, the Associated Press gained rare access to the Mauritanian border, where thousands of Malians had fled, documenting accounts of indiscriminate killings, sexual violence, and summary executions carried out by Africa Corps fighters. One village chief told reporters: “The soldiers speak to no one. Anyone they see, they shoot. No questions, no warning.”

In a region where rebels thrive on local grievances, that approach pushes people straight into the insurgents’ arms. The language barrier compounds the damage, making it extremely difficult for the Russians to build the local relationships that are vital to choking off the insurgency’s support.

Hannah Rae Armstrong, a leading expert on the Sahel, has argued that Russia is repeating France’s central mistake: pursuing a strategy built on military force rather than addressing the local grievances that are the root cause of the violence. The difference, in fairness to Paris, is that French troops were not super-killing villagers.

Diplomatic Self-Sabotage

The problems are not only on the battlefield. According to Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow at Carnegie’s Middle East Program, Russia has failed to support and in some cases actively obstructed meaningful cooperation among Sahelian states. Moscow was one of the loudest cheerleaders when Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to form the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES).

That decision carried a cost. When insurgents attacked Mali on Saturday, ECOWAS offered only a statement and no military assistance, the diplomatic equivalent of Bamako desperately calling for help only to be told “damn, that’s crazy,” before the line went dead. By helping to splinter the region’s collective security architecture, Russia left its clients more isolated precisely when they most needed neighbours. With Moscow’s failures mounting, the question becomes what they mean for the Kremlin’s wider plans, and who steps in if Russia is forced to step away.

Who Benefits

It helps to remember what Russia was actually getting in return for its soldiers, and what is now at stake. In exchange for troops, Moscow secured access to some of the most strategically valuable mineral deposits on the continent. Russian firms, including Uranium One, a Rosatom subsidiary, signed deals to explore and develop uranium and potentially lithium across Mali.

In June 2025, Bamako and the Russian conglomerate the Yadran Group began building a gold refinery in Senou, designed to refine 200 tonnes of gold. Burkina Faso’s minister of energy, mining, and quarries told the Russian agency Sputnik Africa that Russian companies could become strategic partners in extracting gold, zinc, copper, and lithium.

Beyond the financial incentives, Russia is using the Sahel as a test case to prove the Africa Corps’ worth. Success there, particularly in Mali, would let Moscow position itself as a security guarantor that achieved what even the French could not. After the latest debacle, that case is far harder to make, and there are already rumours that the Malian junta is hunting for alternatives. So who can move in to take advantage? The answer is almost everyone.

The Line of Successors

At the top of the list is the United States. In February, Washington shifted its posture toward the AES states. Nick Checker, the newly appointed head of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, visited Bamako, emphasised respect for Mali’s sovereignty, and expressed a desire to renew bilateral ties without interference.

The department also said it would consult Burkina Faso and Niger on shared security and economic interests, framing the outreach as a move past earlier policy missteps. Notably absent from its messaging was any mention of democracy or human rights, long a pillar of American engagement in the region; that omission, alongside the language of sovereignty, was an olive branch to the three junta-ruled states.

According to the BBC, Washington acted primarily out of concern over the jihadist threat. Most victims have been local, but there is fear that if governments lose too much territory, jihadists could build safe bases from which to expand and, in the worst case, strike the West. The overtures appear to be working.

General John Brennan, Deputy Commander of U.S. Africa Command, confirmed Washington was actively supporting all three nations, providing intelligence and hinting at possible weapons supplies, though the BBC reports the U.S. is not seeking to redeploy active forces or reopen the Agadez drone base, closed after Niger’s junta expelled American troops.

Then there is China, quietly exploiting the gap left by declining French influence and sanctions on Russia. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2020 and 2024 China became the largest arms supplier to West Africa. Business is booming enough that the state-owned manufacturer NORINCO opened a regional sales office in Dakar and set up maintenance hubs in Mali and Côte d’Ivoire. China is unlikely to commit troops, but it will probably use Russia’s failures to grab an even larger share of the weapons market.

France’s relationship with the Sahel might charitably be called “complicated.” A long colonial history and an inability to decisively defeat the insurgents have made it a favourite punching bag for Sahelian governments. Yet if the Russians fail so catastrophically that they are expelled, France could be tempted back. It retains significant investments across the region, including in Benin and Togo, and a return could restore access to key minerals such as uranium in Niger, lost after the coups.

Sahelian governments, for their part, may drift back to Paris out of sheer force of habit.

Finally, Turkey. The Atlantic Council reported that since 2022, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger have received at least a dozen shipments of Turkish defence products, one of several signs of the region’s deepening ties to Ankara. Trade is another: bilateral commerce between Turkey and Mali surged 32,000%, from $5 million in 2003 to $165 million in 2022.

Turkish firms have invested in Niger, building an airport and a five-star hotel in Niamey. The most telling indicator comes from French analyst Casus Belli, whose sources confirmed a Turkish presence among the security guards protecting Goita during the most recent attacks. That Goita had Turkish protection even with a significant Russian presence in the country suggests he may, at the very least, be open to swapping the Russians for Turkish forces should Moscow keep failing.

Too Soon to Write the Obituary?

Whether any of that comes to pass is uncertain, because there is a counterargument, one suggesting we may be eulogising Russia’s African project too soon. On 21 April, just days before the coordinated attacks, The Sentry reported that Russia was seeking to double down in West Africa. In the first five months of 2025, three large Russian-made convoys, including trucks, tanks, armoured vehicles, and boats, reached Bamako.

The report also noted Russia’s intent to establish a strategic hub from which to project power across West Africa. These are not the actions of a government winding down its engagement; they are the opposite.

Mali, for its part, appears to welcome Russia’s renewed commitment. You might expect that after the colossal failures just catalogued, Bamako would want nothing more to do with Moscow. Instead, in Goita’s first public appearance since the weekend attacks, he met with the Russian ambassador to Mali, Igor Gromyko, according to photos published by his office. He did not meet other military figures.

He did not address the soldiers risking their lives against the insurgents on state television or radio. He chose to meet the Russian ambassador. Later that day, the Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces had helped prevent a coup during the attacks, stopping rebel fighters from seizing key sites, including the presidential palace.

Goita’s office released no statement to accompany the photos. But as Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque, who has reported extensively from Mali, observed, the images speak louder than words about how reliant the regime is on Russian troops for its survival.

The Real Job: Keeping Juntas Alive

And that may be exactly what saves Russia’s presence in the Sahel. Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, noted that every Sahelian regime partnered with the Russians did so to guarantee its own survival, an assessment echoed by analysts including Bah Traore of the West Africa Think Tank. Traore adds that beyond regime survival, Russia provides information channels the regimes use to spread their messaging, enhance their legitimacy, and shape internal political narratives, creating a symbiotic relationship that deepens their dependence.

As long as Sahelian regimes can use Russian troops to prevent coups and hold power, Russia will keep a place in Africa. The Africa Corps may be ineffective against the insurgents, but that was never really the task. The task is to keep the military regimes that seized power safe from their own countrymen. The armed groups across the Sahel understand this perfectly well.

That is the danger. The other countries of West Africa, and indeed the wider world, cannot afford to wait for these regimes to finally take the insurgent threat seriously. Left unchecked, the armed groups will keep growing until they become too big to handle. Something will have to be done, with or without the cooperation of Russia and its allies.

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Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened at Kidal in April 2026?

A day after one of the most well-coordinated terror attacks in Malian history, Russia’s Africa Corps confirmed it had withdrawn from Kidal, reportedly under a negotiated agreement with the insurgents. According to Radio Free Europe, the Russians left behind massive stockpiles of weapons, equipment, and a downed helicopter, roughly two-and-a-half years after staging a photo op to celebrate capturing the city. A senior Malian officer told Radio France International that the regional governor had warned the Russians three days in advance and they did nothing, and that the departure appeared to have been negotiated in advance.

How many Russian troops are in the Sahel and what are they up against?

According to The Sentry, about 1,000 Africa Corps personnel are deployed in Mali against more than 6,000 JNIM fighters, plus the Azawad Liberation Front and the Islamic State Sahel Province, across a country roughly five times the size of the UK. France once had more than 4,000 troops there and still struggled. In Burkina Faso the number drops to only about 100 deployed Russians. The thin deployments reflect the Ukraine war draining Africa Corps manpower, with the Kremlin redeploying troops to the front lines.

Are Russian forces making the security situation worse?

Yes. Research from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies found that Malian forces and their Russian partners were linked to 77 percent of all civilian fatalities from targeted attacks in Mali in the two years before the latest assault. The Associated Press documented accounts of indiscriminate killings, sexual violence, and summary executions at the Mauritanian border. Experts argue Russia is repeating France’s central mistake of pursuing military force rather than addressing the local grievances fueling the insurgency, while also killing far more civilians than the jihadists did.

What is Russia getting from its Sahel deployments?

Access to strategically valuable minerals. Russian firms including Uranium One, a Rosatom subsidiary, signed deals to explore uranium and potentially lithium across Mali; the Yadran Group began building a 200-tonne gold refinery in Senou in June 2025; and Burkina Faso’s energy minister told Sputnik Africa that Russian companies could become strategic partners in extracting gold, zinc, copper, and lithium. Moscow also uses the Sahel as a test case to prove the Africa Corps’ worth as a security guarantor.

If Russia keeps failing, why does Mali still rely on it?

Because Russia’s real value to the juntas is regime survival rather than counter-insurgency effectiveness. After the weekend attacks, Goita’s first public appearance was a meeting with the Russian ambassador, and Moscow claimed its forces had helped prevent a coup by stopping rebels from seizing the presidential palace. As analysts including Priyal Singh of the Institute for Security Studies note, every Sahelian regime partnered with Russia did so to guarantee its own survival, a service the regimes still desperately want regardless of battlefield results.