CNN — (CNN) — The video is as triumphant as it is horrifying. Rebel fighters, rifles slung over their shoulders, step among more than a dozen corpses strewn on the sand and rocks. Off camera, gunshots are heard.
The scene is from another battle in the vast deserts of northern Mali – only this time the victims were Russians. At the end of the video, the camera pans to a bearded white man on the ground, apparently begging for mercy.
A different video shows several white men, still alive, kneeling among the wreckage of a vehicle as insurgents surround them. A truckload of fighters approaches the men as others kick them in the head.
The Russian mercenaries were apparently attacked as they escorted Malian government troops on patrol last week near the border with Algeria, a vast, no-go area where jihadist and Tuareg groups have long operated.
A Tuareg rebel group claimed responsibility along with al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the Sahel, JNIM (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin). Known for ad hoc cooperation, they appear to have teamed up to trap the Russian convoy.
JNIM claimed on Sunday that a “sophisticated ambush” had wiped out the convoy, killing 50 Russians and several Malian soldiers, and released videos showing several vehicles on fire as well as dozens of bodies in the area. A spokesman for the Tuareg militant group said some Malian soldiers and Russian fighters had also been captured during the fighting.
According to some unofficial Russian Telegram channels, up to 80 Russians were killed.
That would make it by far the worst loss in years for Russian paramilitaries operating in Africa, as the Kremlin has sought to use proxy forces to challenge Western influence in the Sahel and central Africa and prop up unstable regimes.
In an unusual twist on Monday, a Ukrainian official claimed that Kiev had provided intelligence to the militants.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), told Ukrainian television that “the rebels received the necessary information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals.”
“We will not discuss the details right now, but there will be more,” Yusov added.
Channels linked to the Wagner Group, a private military contractor operating in Africa that is now part of what the Russian Defense Ministry calls the Africa Corps, said its fighters had initially inflicted heavy casualties on the militants.
But the fighters had regrouped and Wagner’s command “decided to move additional forces into the battle area.”
In a battle that lasted from Thursday to Saturday, the jihadists increased the number of mass attacks, “using heavy weapons, UAVs [drones] and suicide vehicles,” according to a Telegram account associated with Wagner.
The last radio message from the Russian corps – late on Saturday – read: “We have three left, we are still fighting,” according to the channel.
The commander, Sergei Shevchenko, was among those killed in the battle, according to a second Wagner channel.
Also among the dead, according to several Russian Telegram channels, was one of Russia’s most popular military bloggers, Nikita Fedyanin, whose Gray Zone channel has more than half a million subscribers.
Fedyanin’s death cannot be independently verified, but a photo from the scene looked very much like him. A longtime Wagner analyst told CNN that the Gray Zone channel has stopped being updated. “I think the story is true. he probably died.”
A former commander of the ambush squad told Telegram that more than 80 men were killed and more than 15 captured. The commander – call sign Rusich – told Telegram that he was trying to convey a message to the Russian Defense Ministry. “I am ready to provide myself and all those people who are ready to follow me completely free of charge, in order to save the children.”
Another social media account linked to Wagner spoke of a “heavily uneven battle, as a result of which both our fighters and the Malian military were heroically killed.” He pledged that no matter who the enemy is, “global terrorism, henchmen of Western countries or a raging Ukrainian sect … we know that the Russian warrior will certainly continue his journey.”
There is no way to verify the exact number of Russian casualties (some Russian channels say the death toll was not as high as 80), nor how many Malian soldiers were killed. Mali’s armed forces said on Friday that only two soldiers had been killed, but that the fighting was taking place in an area that “remains a stronghold for terrorists and smugglers of all stripes”.
CNN has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment. Korotkov, who works with the London-based Dossier Center, noted that “not one official body of the Russian Federation has spoken on this issue. Neither the Ministry of Defense, nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor the Kremlin commented on the deaths of dozens of Russian citizens in clashes on the African continent outside the zone of special military operation.
Big blow to Africa
Wagner and other Russian mercenary groups are used to losses – in Syria, the Central African Republic, Mozambique and Mali in recent years. The Wagner PMC lost hundreds and possibly thousands of men capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut two years ago. And in Syria five years ago, a devastating attack by Russian mercenaries on an oil refinery resulted in dozens of casualties.
But beyond eastern Ukraine, Russian mercenaries have rarely suffered a setback on such a scale.
Amid upheaval in Mali, the Central African Republic, Niger and Burkina Faso, Kremlin-backed Russian elements stepped in to usurp traditional French influence, starting with CAR in 2018. The military regime in Mali turned to Wagner soon after. the seizure of power in 2021.
After the death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in a mysterious plane crash near Moscow last year, many of his fighters were handed over to a Russian African force led by Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov.
Yevkurov has been an occasional visitor to Mali, and the African Corps said on its Telegram channel in January that it planned to increase its force in Mali from 100 to 300 men.
The recent clashes also show that a coalition of warring groups is strengthening, in Mali and beyond.
There are ever-shifting alliances among rebel groups in the Sahel, but Tuareg groups have sometimes made common cause with al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the region, JNIM.
JNIM claimed to have attacked Wagner forces in Mali before. It has been particularly active recently in both northern Mali and several parts of western Africa. In the last week alone, JNIM has claimed five attacks in different parts of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, according to the SITE intelligence group, which tracks jihadist groups. One of these was an IED attack on a Russian vehicle in the same area of Mali as the last devastating attack.
In addition, it carried out a rare attack on a military base in northern Togo last week, expanding the range of its operations.
But it is the ambitious attack on the Russian-Mali convoy near the Algerian border that will catapult JNIM’s operations to a much wider audience.
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