The news
The military juntas of Mali and Niger have both severed diplomatic ties with Ukraine after they determined that Kiev was involved in an operation to support Tuareg rebels in northern Mali. Last month’s uprising left 47 Malian soldiers and 84 Russian military contractors dead.
The attack and the subsequent diplomatic aftermath have raised the first serious concerns that the war between Russia and Ukraine, now in its third year, could be playing out on African soil.
Oa sundayMali’s military leaders condemned Kiev’s “support for international terrorism” and its “flagrant aggression”.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that regretted a “short-sighted and hasty” decision, taken “without having carried out a thorough study of the facts and circumstances of the incident in northern Mali.”
But on Ukrainian television, Andriy Yusov, spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Service of Ukraine (DIU), said the rebels “…the necessary information“which led to a successful operation against Russian war criminals.”
While most African governments resisted Bamako’s call to condemn the “neo-Nazi and horrific” Ukrainian authorities, the government of Niger, also led by a military junta, announced late on tuesday that it also breaks its diplomatic ties with Kiev. Niamey criticized “the silence of other African countries and the African Union” in the face of “malign attempts to turn the Sahel into a theater of ideological and strategic confrontation”
The West African bloc ECOWAS, from which Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso withdrew earlier this year to form a separate regional bloc, expressed his “strong disapproval and condemnation of any foreign interference in the region.”
Knowing more
This series of events raised alarm bells outside Mali and Niger. A video of the interview with Andriy Yusov was shared on social media by Iouri Pyvovarov, the Ukrainian ambassador to Senegal, leading to anger from the Malian government and a reprimand from the Senegalese foreign minister. Pyvovarov was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “to remind him of the obligations of discretion, restraint and non-interference,” the statement said.
“Bamako has always denied” using the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization that operates widely in Africa, said Bokar Sangaré, a political science researcher currently in Bamako. “The authorities only refer to lowly military instructors, no different from their Western counterparts.” Sangaré said he doubted that the Ukrainian action was an isolated case: Wagner forces recently faced unexpected setbacks in Sudan and Syriathanks to the unacknowledged assistance of the DIU.
Joel’s vision
There are reasons to believe that the public acknowledgement of Ukrainian aid to the Tuareg separatists was a blunder. First, it came shortly before Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba left for a diplomatic tour of Africa — his fourth in two years — to Malawi, Zambia and Mauritius from August 4 to 8. Since March 2022, when African countries made up half of the abstentions on the UN resolution condemning “aggression against Ukraine,” Kiev has been on a sustained charm offensive in Africa, opening several embassies. It has even suggested that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would make his first visit to Africa this year.
Second, Pyvovarov promptly deleted his social media posts about Mali. Third, Ukraine did not reciprocate the severance of ties, instead emphasizing its “significant contribution” to peacekeeping operations in Mali.
Sangaré argued that the struggle between Ukraine and Russia in Africa is primarily about influence, perception and communication, “and not yet about outsourcing the Ukrainian conflict to Africa.”
Still, there are disturbing signs of Kiev’s determination to take countermeasures against Wagnerian forces in Africa. In his now-deleted posts, Pyvoravov declared: “The work will continue. There will certainly be other results. Punishment for war crimes and terrorism is inevitable.”
Ukrainian intelligence services are believed to have sent out tentative feelers to separatist movements in Chad, where increased Russian involvement is expected. Their presence in Libya is also known to security specialists.
