The identities of Wagner mercenaries lost in a Mali ambush revealed
Among the dozens of
Wagner mercenaries presumed dead after a lethal battle with Tuareg rebels
during a desert sandstorm in Mali in July were Russian war veterans who
survived tours in Ukraine, Libya and Syria, according to interviews with
relatives and a review of social media data.
The loss of such
experienced fighters exposes dangers faced by Russian mercenary forces working
for military juntas, which are struggling to contain separatists and powerful
offshoots of Islamic State and Al Qaeda across the arid Sahel region in Mali,
Burkina Faso and Niger.
The Mali defeat raises
doubts over whether Moscow, which has admitted funding Wagner and has absorbed
many of its fighters into a defence ministry force, will do better than Western
and U.N. troops recently expelled by the juntas, six officials and experts who
work in the region said.
By cross-referencing
public information with online posts from relatives and fighters, speaking to
seven relatives and using facial recognition software to analyse battlefield
footage verified by Reuters, the news agency was able to identify 23 fighters
missing in action and two others taken into Tuareg captivity after the ambush
near Tinzaouaten, a town on the Algerian border.
Several of the men had
survived the siege of Bakhmut in Ukraine, which Wagner's late founder Yevgeny
Prigozhin called a "meat grinder."
Others had served in
Libya, Syria and elsewhere. Some were former Russian soldiers, at least one of
whom had retired after a full-length army career.
Grisly footage of dead
fighters has now circulated online, and some of relatives told Reuters the
bodies of their husbands and sons had been abandoned in the desert. Reuters
could not confirm how many of the men it identified were dead.
Margarita Goncharova
said her son, Vadim Evsiukov, 31, was first recruited in prisonwhere he was
serving a drug-related sentence in 2022.
He rose through the
ranks in Ukraine to lead a platoon of 500 men, she said. After coming home, he
worked as a tailor but struggled with survivor's guilt and secretly travelled
to Africa in April to join his former commander, she said.
"He wanted to fly
to Africa many times. I discouraged him as much as I could," Goncharova
said in an interview with Reuters.
"I told him 'fate
has given you a once-in-a-million chance. You can start your life again, you've
won such a crazy lottery'."
The Russian Ministry of
Defence, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Wagner did not respond to requests for
comment for this story.
After Prigozhin died in
August last year, Wagner employees were invited to join a newly created group
called the Africa Corps, under the defence ministry, "to fight for justice
and the interests of Russia," according to the Africa Corps channel on
social-media platform Telegram.
On the channel, Africa
Corps says about half its personnel are former Wagner employees who it allows
to use Wagner insignia. Wagner's social media channels remain active.
The Russian government
has not publicly commented on the Tinzaouaten battle.
Mali's armed forces-led
government said the defeat had no impact on its goals. The Malian Armed Forces
"are committed to restoring the authority of the state throughout the
country," army spokesman Colonel Major Souleymane Dembele told Reuters.
Wagner has acknowledged
heavy losses in the Mali ambush but gave no figure. The Malian army, which
fought alongside the Russians, also did not give a toll. Tuareg rebels, who are
fighting for an independent homeland, said they had killed 84 Russians and 47
Malians.
Reuters could not
independently establish how many were killed in battle.
One video, out of more
than 20 sent to Reuters by a Tuareg rebel spokesman, showed at least 47 bodies,
mostly white men, in military-style uniforms lying in the desert. Reuters verified
the location and date of the video.
Mikhail Zvinchuk, a
prominent blogger close to the Russian defence ministry, said on social media
platform RuTube in August that the defeat showed Wagner fighters who arrived
from Ukraine had underestimated the rebels and the Al Qaeda fighters.
MISSING
IN ACTION
Wagner-linked Telegram
accounts named two of the dead as Nikita Fedyakin, the administrator of The
Grey Zone, a popular Wagner-focused Telegram channel with over half a million
subscribers, and Sergei Shevchenko, who the accounts described as the unit
commander. Reuters could not verify the identity of Shevchenko.
Reuters separately
identified 23 Wagner operators missing in Mali via relatives who posted in an
official Wagner Telegram chat group, checking the names against social media
accounts, publicly available data and facial recognition software.
All the relatives
received calls from Wagner recruiters on Aug. 6 to notify them their men were
missing in action, they said in the chat group.
Lyubov Bazhenova told
Reuters she had no idea her son Vladimir Akimov, 25, who had briefly served in
Russia's elite airborne forces as a conscript, had signed up.
She was angry with
Wagner for sharing no further information about his fate or the whereabouts of
his body. She said letters to the prosecutor's office, defence ministry and
foreign ministry had gone unanswered.
Facial-recognition
software was used to identify another two men captured by Tuareg fighters,
based on photographs and videos of the ambush site published by Tuareg sources.
The Tuareg rebels
posted videos and photos of the two captives on social media. Mohamed
Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for the rebel alliance, confirmed the men were
in rebel captivity as of late August.
One of the missing
fighters, Alexei Kuzekmaev, 47, had no military experience, his wife Lyudmila
Kuzekmaeva told Reuters.
"Neither my
hysterics, nor tears, nor persuasion - nothing helped. He just confronted me a
month before he left home. He said 'I bought a ticket and will be
leaving.'"
Among the most
experienced men was Alexander Lazarev, 48, a Russian army veteran who served in
wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s, according to his
wife's posts in the Wagner channel.
She declined to
comment. Lazarev appears in many photos on the Russian Facebook equivalent
VKontakte wearing military uniform, with symbols linked to several army
subdivisions.
PARASTATAL MERCENARY
FORCE
Democratic governments
in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were overthrown in a series of coups since 2020
driven by anger with corrupt leaders and a near decade of failed Western
efforts to fight insurgencies that have killed thousands and displaced
millions.
The military juntas
have kicked out French and U.S. troops and U.N. peacekeepers.
In Africa, Wagner emerged
in Sudan in 2017 as the deniable face of Russian operations. Its enterprises
soon ranged from protecting African coup leaders to gold mining and fighting
jihadists. Wagner is also active in Central African Republic. It first appeared
in Mali in late 2021.
Wagner's fortunes rose
and fell last year. In May, the group led Russia to its first significant
Ukrainian battlefield victory in almost a year with the capture of Bakhmut.
But after his criticism
of Russian military leaders and his effort to lead a rebellion weeks after the
Bakhmut victory, Prigozhin died in a fiery plane crash in August. The Kremlin
has rejected as an "absolute lie" U.S. officials' claim that Putin
had Prigozhin killed.
Eric Whitaker, the top
U.S. envoy to Burkina Faso until retiring in June, who previously served in
Niger, Mali and Chad, said the Putin administration has achieved complete
control over the Wagner brand in the post-Prigozhin era.
"Africa Corps
earns (the Russian government) hard-currency payments from host governments for
its services and also gains a significant sources of revenue from gold derived
from its activities in the Sahel," he said.
Russian mercenary
activity soared in Mali after Africa Corps was formed, according to data from
the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a U.S.-based
crisis-monitoring group.
Based on media reports
and social media documenting, the data shows violent events linked to Russian
mercenaries rose 81% and reported civilian fatalities rose 65% over the past
year, compared to the year before Prigozhin's death.
Wagner does not publish
recruitment figures. Jędrzej Czerep, an analyst at Warsaw-based think tank
Polish Institute of International Affairs, estimated that around 6,000 Russian
mercenaries serve in Africa, while three diplomatic sources said about
1,500-2,000 were in Mali.
"When Africa Corps
started to promote and recruit, they were flooded with applications," said
Czerep.
"Being sent to one
of the African missions was seen as far safer than Ukraine," he said.
Tuareg spokesman
Ramadane said the rebel alliance was preparing for more clashes.
Further losses could
eventually drive Russia out, said Tibor Nagy, the top U.S. envoy to Africa in
2019, when Wagner withdrew from northern Mozambique months after around a dozen
of its men were killed during a conflict with an Islamic State affiliate.
"They were out of
there very quickly," said Nagy.
Wagner has not publicly
commented on its plans in Mali.
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