
Russia's Africa Corps freed one Russian citizen and one Ukrainian who had been abducted by an al-Qaida affiliate in Niger in July 2024, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
The ministry identified the freed captives as Russian citizen Oleg Gret and Ukrainian citizen Yuri Yurov. They both appeared in a video posted on a media platform affiliated with Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an armed group which controls large swathes of territory in the Sahel region.