‘A successful military operation’

Ukrainian intelligence says ‘more to come’ after rebels in Mali reportedly kill dozens of Wagner Group fighters

Tuareg separatists in northern Mali reported a major victory over government troops and Russian Wagner Group mercenary fighters over the weekend after an ambush that, according to the Wall Street Journal, may have been one of the deadliest attacks against Russian forces in Africa in years. Top Wagner Group commander Sergey Shevchenko and Nikita Fedyanin, owner of the popular Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone, were reportedly among the dead. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence hinted that Kyiv played a key role in helping the Tuareg rebels pull off the operation. Here’s what we know.

Heavy fighting broke out between Wagner Group mercenaries and Tuareg rebels late last week, resulting in significant losses for the Russian outfit, according to Reuters and the Associated Press.

Wagner Group has had a presence in Mali since 2021, when France withdrew its peacekeeping forces from the country following a coup and interim President Assimi Goïta invited the Russian mercenaries to replace them.

A statement from the Tuareg group, a coalition known as the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD), said that Malian troops and Wagner Group forces suffered “huge manpower and equipment losses,” including “dozens” of dead and wounded men. According to a Tuareg commander, 54 Wagner Group fighters and seven Malian soldiers were killed. The Malian army, meanwhile, said that only two of its soldiers were killed and 10 injured.

The exact number of casualties among Wagner Group fighters is unknown, but videos of the dead posted on social media show approximately 30 bodies. The Russian Telegram channel Baza said that at least 20 Wagner fighters were killed. Rybar, a channel with close ties to the Russian Defense Ministry, reported that the mercenary group’s losses were “hardly more than a couple of dozen.” The channel noted that at least some of the bodies in the video could belong to Tuareg rebels and may have been “filmed for effect.”

A source who previously belonged to Wagner Group told BBC News Russian that at least 82 mercenaries were killed. A former Wagner Group assault unit commander with the call sign “Rusich” also reported more than 80 casualties. According to The Wall Street Journal, the incident was likely one of the deadliest attacks against Russian mercenaries in Africa since Wagner Group forces were first sent there in 2017.

BBC News Russian also reported that the Tuareg rebels managed to damage at least one Russian Mi-24 attack helicopter. WSJ said the rebels attacked a helicopter used to transport injured Wagner Group fighters when it conducted an emergency landing in the town of Kidal.

One of the videos of the dead appears to show Nikita Fedyanin, the administrator of the Wagner Group-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone. The neo-Nazi paramilitary group Task Force Rusich also reported Fedyanin’s death, as did the Russian state news agency TASS, citing people close to him.

According to his social media accounts, Fedyanin was 29 years old. His last Telegram post was published on July 23 and includes a photograph showing a group of Wagner Group fighters in front of an armored vehicle in “one of the countries of the African Sahel” (a region that includes Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad).

Some of the Wagner Group fighters involved in the fighting were reportedly taken captive. Russian military blogger Boris Rozhin said that one of the prisoners was a fighter named Anton Yelizarov and that he had “already been swapped back.” The Telegram channel Military Informant reported that the captured Wagner members were “promptly bought back” in a deal brokered by the Russian Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps.

The Insider has reported, without citing its source, that Yelizarov “became Wagner Group’s de facto commander” after the mercenary group’s co-founder Dmitry Utkin was killed in a plane crash along with Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023. Meduza’s Explainers team notes that Wagner Group formally ceased to exist after Prigozhin and Utkin’s deaths.

Ukrainian media has reported that Yelizarov led Wagner Group offensives against the cities of Soledar and Bakhmut earlier in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Commenting on the Wagner forces’ defeat in Mali, Andriy Yusov, the spokesman for Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, said that the Tuareg rebels “received the information, among other things, that was necessary to carry out a successful military operation against the Russian war criminals.” He added that he could not reveal any details but that there would be “more to come.”

On July 29, Wagner Group released a statement saying that an assault unit led by Commander Sergey Shevchenko had fought alongside Malian troops against members of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (a coalition of Tuarag and Arab nationalist groups) and Al-Qaeda in Sahel (JNIM) near the town of Tinzaouaten. The mercenaries said their opponents were able to regroup thanks to a sandstorm and attacked Wagner forces with heavy weaponry and drones. On July 27, Shevchenko’s group sent out its last radio message, saying there were only three of them left. Shevchenko died in combat soon after.

The statement confirmed that Wagner Group suffered losses but did not say how many fighters were killed or who they were.