End of the mission of the Wagner Group in Mali. They will replace their African corps

Russian mercenaries from the so -called Wagner group announced on Friday that their mission in Mali ended and they leave this country. However, their place in Little and other African countries is directly subject to the Russian Ministry of Defense, soldiers from the African Corps.

The Reuters agency quoted a statement of mercenaries posted on their channel in a telegram, in which the abandonment of Mali explains “a successful end of a three -half -year -old mission” in this African country. Mercenaries boast that they pushed Islamist forces, killed their commanders and transferred the whole country to the control of the Malian military junta.

Last weekend, jihadist attacks on the airport in the historic city of Timbuktu and to a military base in the city of Boueliassi, where over 30 Malian soldiers were killed, testify that Russian mercenaries failed to restore peace.

Mali has been fighting for years with the jihadists associated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), and on the border with Algeria they struggle with the groups of Tuaregs, some of which are fighting for the secessionist state of Azawad.

The temporary president of the country, Assimi Goita, who came to power as a result of two attacks of state from 2020 and 2021. He promised to restore peace in the country. Dissatisfied with the progress of the French troops, he told them to leave the country from which he also asked the UN peace mission of 11,000. In their place in 2022, he invited mercenaries from the Wagner group, who – according to the estimates of the American Think Tank Institute of War Studies (ISW) – a year later there were about 2,000 in this country, although the following year their number dropped to 1,000, probably because of failures in Ukraine, where they were downloaded.

In Mali, which is the third golden producer in Africa, Russia is very involved in its extraction. Already at the beginning of 2023, Russian mercenaries took over at least three large mines in Balandougou, Koyoko and Yanfolila. And recently they also got involved in refining. At the beginning of the passing week, Moscow signed a contract with Junta for the construction of a gold refinery in Bamako, where she plans to process over 200 tons of ore a year. At the same time, the process of expropriation of the Canadian company Barrick Gold, which manages the most efficient Loulo and Goonoto mines.

For this reason, the Kremlin cannot afford to leave Mali. Wagner's group, founded by Jewgenija Prigożyna, once close to Vladimir Putin, for a long time enjoyed a large autonomy. But after the death of Prigożyna Kremlin, he decided to completely subordinate it or exchange other units. The case of small, but also the Central African Republic, where mercenaries have been to replace regular branches of the African Corps since January 2026, shows that Russia has lost confidence in the insubordinated mercenaries.

Mining is only one of the elements of the Russian plan to draw profits from Africa. Russia's goal is to fuel uncertainty to be considered the only player capable of ensuring security, for which he demands a generous payment, as Jack Watling, the Land War specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

Tadeusz Brzozowski (PAP)

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