When Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States in 2024 and formed their own Alliance of Sahel States, Kremlin officials cheered. But according to a new analysis by Frederic Wehrey and Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment, published in Foreign Affairs, Moscow's support for the new bloc has been "long on theatrics and short on actual resources and capability."
As "Hvylya" notes, the authors point to the joint 5,000-strong counterterrorism battalion drawn from the three AES member states as a case in point. Russia has publicly embraced the battalion but provided little actual support. And the Africa Corps - which replaced Wagner as Moscow's main military instrument in the region - is unlikely to change that pattern, Wehrey and Weiss argue, since over 80 percent of its personnel are former Wagner fighters who lack the experience to build the kind of personal relationships that defined decades of Western security engagement.
The failure to support cross-border cooperation has had concrete consequences. The lack of intelligence sharing and joint patrols among Sahelian states has given jihadi groups ample room to reorganize and expand across the region's porous borders. Russian personnel have paid the price - including in a deadly ambush in Tinzaouaten in northern Mali in the summer of 2024 that killed 46 soldiers.
Wehrey and Weiss contrast Moscow's approach with previous U.S. and French efforts, which - however flawed - worked to shore up regional integration while confronting terrorist groups linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda. Russia's attempts at regional cooperation, by contrast, have consisted mainly of high-level exchanges between senior military officials. "Much is discussed, but little is delivered," the authors conclude.
The Carnegie scholars note that Wagner's track record worldwide offers little reason for optimism. The group scored no major successes in training local fighters or fostering unit cohesion anywhere it was deployed - a pattern the Africa Corps appears to have inherited along with most of Wagner's personnel.
Also read: "Hvylya" explored how Kosovo shattered Russia's post-Soviet illusions about its ability to project power.