Rebels have retaken a Malian city that has become a symbol of Russia’s pledge to provide security where Western forces have failed.
Kidal fell during a coordinated weekend attack on military installations across the country. The desert garrison was under rebel control for about a decade until it was captured in 2023 by Malian soldiers and fighters linked to the Kremlin – now operating under the name Africa Corps. Now he is gone again.
Africa Corps, a unit overseen by Russia’s Ministry of Defense, announced on Monday that it was withdrawing from Kidal, in a rare public statement posted on its Telegram channel. The unit, which took over from Wagner’s group of Russian-backed mercenaries in 2023, said the withdrawal was a “joint decision” with Mali.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Malian army could not be reached.
The withdrawal undermines claims that Moscow could deliver where France and other Western allies could not. Mali’s junta leader, General Assimi Goïta, seized power in 2021 arguing that civilian leaders had failed to stop a decades-long Islamist insurgency that has spread across the country’s north and center and killed thousands. He also excluded UN peacekeepers, European counter-terrorism forces and French troops.
These longtime allies were replaced by Wagner’s mercenaries, later renamed the Africa Corps.
“It will be a setback for Russia more broadly,” said Nina Wilén, director of the Africa program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Egmont. “The Russians negotiating from Kidal and leaving their Malian counterparts behind does not give them a good impression as security partners.”
Kidal carries excessive symbolic weight. The Malian army was driven out of the city in 2012 by Tuareg separatists and al-Qaeda-linked militants, and an effort to retake it in 2014 left dozens dead on both sides. When government forces and Wagner fighters, the predecessors of the Africa Corps, finally recaptured the city in 2023, the junta presented it as justification that it had made the right decision.
“The army managed to march into Kidal, where it had not been present for about ten years,” said Oumar Berte, a political analyst at the University of Rouen Normandy. But today, “the security situation in Mali is worse than ever.”
The weekend attack marks a further escalation in its sheer scale. Al-Qaeda’s official Mali affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and the Azawad Liberation Front, Tuareg separatists who have long fought for an independent state in the north, confirmed they carried out the attacks together. The convergence of the two anti-government forces signals an increased threat to the junta-led regime.
Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara — a junta deputy and official who helped broker the Russian partnership and earned the nickname “Mr. Russia” — was killed in a suicide bombing at his home on April 25 as part of the attacks, military officials said.
In an unverified video shared on X by a spokesman for the Azawad Liberation Front, Russian forces appear to leave their base in pickup trucks and desert vehicles while rebel fighters wave their weapons and cheer.
Along with Niger and Burkina Faso, Mali is one of three junta-led states that make up the Sahelian Alliance. All three came to power in coups between 2021 and 2023, expelling French forces and turning to Moscow for security support. Mali has gone furthest in its embrace of the Africa Corps, whose fighters have openly operated alongside Malian troops, including in the 2023 campaign to retake Kidal.
“Mali realizes that Russia is not the solution to their security problems,” said Ulf Laessing, director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Sahel Program. And Niger and Burkina Faso are likely to draw the same conclusion from the weekend’s events.
“I’m not sure anyone else wants to pick up the pieces that are left of the Sahel,” he said.
According to a 2024 Human Rights Watch report, Mali’s armed forces and Russian fighters have already been accused of killing and disappearing civilians during military operations in northern Mali. Now some are reading Russia’s withdrawal from Kidal as a betrayal, even as the militants continued to consolidate gains from their weekend strikes on Monday.
“We see them leaving Kidal after coming here to help,” said Moussa Sangaré, a car parts dealer in Bamako, the capital. “You can’t tell people you’re going to help them and then just pack up and leave.
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
