When Malian and Russian forces seized the northern city of Kidal in late 2023, it looked like a vindication of Moscow's military approach in the Sahel. The operation - backed by Turkish-made strike drones - took less than two weeks to dislodge Tuareg separatist groups that had held the city since the mid-2010s. But according to Carnegie scholars Frederic Wehrey and Andrew Weiss, writing in Foreign Affairs, whatever security gains that victory achieved have been "offset by brutal attacks on civilians."

The analysis, cited by "Hvylya", describes how Malian government forces and their Russian partners carried out collective punishment in the months that followed - a pattern that backfired spectacularly. Instead of fragmenting the opposition to Bamako, the brutality united it, driving a new tactical alliance between three secular Tuareg and Arab groups and several local jihadi networks, including al-Qaeda's regional affiliate, that the Tuareg had long kept at arm's length.

The same dynamic has played out across central and southern Mali and Burkina Faso. Wehrey and Weiss note that collective punishment by Russian and local government forces has "routinely produced civilian casualty levels that exceeded those caused by rebel groups," fueling recruitment into the armed opposition rather than suppressing it.

Some analysts suggested that the withdrawal of Wagner fighters in mid-2025 and their replacement by the Africa Corps, run by Russia's Defense Ministry, might signal a shift toward less brutal methods. The Carnegie scholars see little evidence of that. Reports from UN human rights experts and international media continue to document torture, rape, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of civilians in Russian-backed operations.

Wehrey and Weiss draw a pointed comparison with France's earlier Operation Barkhane, which also favored attritional warfare without addressing governance or pursuing political settlements. In Moscow's case, they argue, these shortcomings were magnified by the indiscriminate violence that Russian forces practiced from the start - a military footprint too small to win and too brutal to hold.

Also read: "Hvylya" covered how Russia's own war strategy creates the very insecurity the Kremlin sought to prevent.