Wagner Group setback in Mali challenges Moscow’s strategy in Africa and the region’s faith in Russian mercenaries

While Russia’s army is bogged down in Ukraine, its mercenaries are faring no better in Africa.

In late July 2024, mercenaries from the the Wagner Group, a Moscow-aligned private military company, accompanied the Malian army in what the Malian regime called a “stabilization operation” in the West African country’s northeastern town of Tinzaouaten, near the Algerian border.

That mission quickly went sideways when fighting broke out between that coalition and rebels from the Permanent Strategic Framework, an ethnically Tuareg separatist group.