Shortly after Malian forces captured the Tuareg rebel stronghold of Kidal in November, mercenaries from Russia's Wagner Group, who backed the government troops, briefly hoisted their flag over the city for a photo op.
Over the ensuing months, the Russian mercenaries would "openly taunt" the Tuaregs and the Islamic extremist groups battling for control of the country by posting provocative or daring images on their Telegram channel, according to Caleb Weiss, an expert on the Sahel region with the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Now, eight months later, the Tuaregs, supported by Islamic extremist groups, are the ones celebrating. In what was likely a coordinated ambush, the two forces killed several dozen Wagner fighters and Malian troops outside the northeastern town of Tinzaouaten late last week, according to various reports.
The combatant loss is likely the largest suffered by Russian forces since they returned to Africa a few years ago and could match the number of French troops killed in service on the continent from 2013 to 2022, Weiss said.
The rout of Russian mercenaries in Mali could reverberate beyond the borders of the impoverished and unstable country. Africa has become a major theater of competition between Russia and the West over the past few years as Moscow seeks to reshape the international order.
Moscow has been offering regime protection and other services to authoritarian governments in Africa and has recently expanded into Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger as military coups sweep through the Sahel.
Malian and Wagner forces were engaged in combat near Tinzaouaten, on the Algerian border, when they were ambushed on July 27. Videos posted on social media showed about two dozen bodies purported to be Wagner fighters, though RFE/RL could not confirm the authenticity of the footage.
The Telegram channel Wagner Orchestra reported that several dozen mercenaries were killed in the fighting near Tinzaouaten and five more were captured. Meanwhile, the Tuareg separatists said in a statement that "dozens" of what they referred to as enemy fighters were killed and wounded. The Al-Qaeda offshoot said 50 mercenaries were killed along with 10 fighters from the Mali Armed Forces.
The decimation of Wagner forces in Mali "is a big deal because it punctures the myths that there has been an improvement in security under the military juntas," Joseph Siegle, research director at the Washington-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies, told RFE/RL. It also puts "a huge dent" in the reputation of Russian forces in the region, he said.
Wagner forces were invited to Mali by the junta that took power in 2021. The junta had a falling out with French forces who had failed to stem the stream of attacks by Islamic extremists. France, which had about 2,400 troops in Mali, lost 59 of those soldiers during its nine-year stint in the country.
With Wagner at its back, the junta then ordered thousands of UN troops maintaining the 2015 truce between the Tuareg and the authorities out of the country. Months after they departed, Mali and Wagner forces attacked Kidal, spreading instability.
Russia has slightly more than 1,000 Wagner fighters in Mali, which is about half the size of the force France deployed and is insufficient to address the threats, Siegle said.
The rout in Tinzaouaten exposes "the unsustainability of the Russian strategy in the Sahel," Siegle said. "It works for the junta, and it works for Russia, but it doesn't work for the people. The situation is getting much worse in society."
Weiss said the losses are unlikely to cause Russia to pull its Wagner forces out of Mali like it did in Mozambique following the killing of several fighters in that country.
"Putin and the Kremlin have invested a lot in Mali and the Sahel in general. It's not like Mozambique," Weiss, who is based in Uganda, told RFE/RL. "However, they may not be as adamant to spearhead assaults like they were doing in Kidal."
Sebastian Elischer, a political science professor at the University of Florida and an expert on the Sahel region and violent extremism, said Russia could potentially increase Wagner’s presence in Mali if the junta agrees to pay.
“This is all a private business, and that's the big difference in military cooperation between Mali and the U.S. or Mali and France, and Mali and Russia,” he said. “The Russians will ask for things.”
But Elischer said that unlike the Central African Republic and Sudan, where Wagner or a successor known as the Africa Corps is also present, Mali has limited natural resources to fund the troops.
On the other hand, if the battle in the north is the beginning of a trend of fierce, deadly fighting with separatists, then Russia may decide to curtail involvement, Elischer said.
Still, groups holding power in Mali and other African countries are unlikely to drop Russia as a protector because they have few alternatives after alienating the West, Weiss said.
Elischer said China is carrying out low-level military training in the Sahel but he doesn’t see Beijing getting involved in Mali as “they normally don’t do this.”
Lou Osborn, an analyst at All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group, said Russia's operations in Mali so far seems to be a failure.
"Previously, the Malian authorities managed to conclude agreements with the Tuaregs in order to focus on the jihadists," he told RFE/RL. "Now this is no longer the case, all agreements have been violated, not least because of how cruelly the Malian Army and Russian mercenaries behave toward all opponents without exception."
State control of the media has kept that impression under wraps locally, portraying the Russian presence as successful, but Elischer said that can only last so long.
“Over time, what inevitably we will see, is the crumbling of Russian and junta propaganda in Mali, because the security challenge is just so severe,” he said.
