Exclusive-Wagner lost veterans in ambush in Mali, which was a defeat for the Russian campaign in Africa

Authors: Filipp Lebedev, Felix Light and Jessica Donati

LONDON/DAKAR (Reuters) – Dozens of Wagner mercenaries presumed dead after a deadly battle with Tuareg rebels during a desert sandstorm in Mali in July included Russian war veterans who had survived missions in Ukraine, Libya and Syria, according to interviews with relatives and a review of social media data.

The loss of such seasoned fighters highlights the dangers facing Russian mercenary forces working for military juntas battling separatists and powerful factions of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the arid Sahel region of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The defeat in Mali raises questions about whether Moscow, which has admitted funding Wagner and has incorporated many of his fighters into its defence ministry, can fare better than Western and UN forces recently expelled by the junta, said six officials and experts working in the region.

By comparing public information with online posts by relatives and fighters, interviewing seven relatives and analyzing battlefield footage reviewed by Reuters using facial recognition software, the agency was able to identify 23 fighters missing in action and two others taken prisoner by Tuaregs after an 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 retired after a full military career.

Gruesome footage of dead fighters has now circulated online, and some relatives have told Reuters that the bodies of their husbands and sons have been dumped in the desert. Reuters could not confirm how many of the men identified were dead.

Margarita Goncharova said her son, Vadim Evsiukov, 31, was first recruited in prison, where he was serving a drug sentence in 2022. He rose through the ranks in Ukraine to lead a platoon of 500 men, she said. After returning home, he worked as a tailor but struggled with survivor’s guilt and secretly left for Africa in April to join his former commander, she said.

“He wanted to go to Africa many times. I discouraged him as much as I could,” Goncharova told Reuters in an interview. “I told him: ‘fate has given you a chance that happens once in a million. You can start your life over, you’ve won this crazy lottery.'”

The Russian Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Wagner did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

After Prigozhin’s death last August, Wagner employees were invited to join a newly formed group called Africa Corps, subordinate to the Defense Ministry, “to fight for justice and the interests of Russia,” the Africa Corps channel on the Telegram social media platform reported.

On the Africa Corps channel, he says about half of his staff are former Wagner employees, whom he allows to use Wagner insignia. Wagner’s social media channels remain active.

The Russian government has not publicly commented on the Battle of Tinzaouaten.

The Malian government, led by the armed forces, said the defeat had not affected its objectives. 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 admitted to suffering heavy losses in the ambush in Mali, but did not provide any figures. The Malian army, which fought alongside the Russians, also did not provide a casualty figure. The Tuareg rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland, said they had killed 84 Russians and 47 Malians.

Reuters could not independently determine how many people died in the battle. One video, among 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 footage.

Mikhail Zvinchuk, a well-known blogger with close ties to the Russian Defense Ministry, wrote in August on the social networking site RuTube that the defeat showed that Wagner’s fighters, who came from Ukraine, had underestimated the rebels and al-Qaeda fighters.

MISSING IN ACTION

Wagner-linked Telegram accounts listed the two dead as Nikita Fedyakin, an administrator of The Grey Zone, a popular Wagner-focused Telegram channel with more than half a million subscribers, and Sergei Shevchenko, whose accounts described him as a unit commander. Reuters was unable to verify Shevchenko’s identity.

Reuters separately identified 23 Wagner operatives missing in Mali through relatives who posted on Wagner’s official Telegram chat group, checking names against social media accounts, publicly available data and facial recognition software. All of the relatives received calls from Wagner recruiters on Aug. 6 to notify them that their men were missing in action, they said in the chat group.

Lyubov Bazhenova told Reuters she had no idea that her son Vladimir Akimov, 25, who briefly served in Russia’s elite air force as a conscript, had enlisted in the military. She was angry with Wagner for not providing any further information about his fate or the whereabouts of his body. She said letters to prosecutors, the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry went unanswered.

Facial recognition software was used to identify two other men captured by Tuareg fighters, based on photos and videos of the ambush site released by Tuareg sources. Tuareg rebels posted videos and photos of the two captives on social media. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for the rebel alliance, confirmed that the men were in rebel captivity in late August.

As the missing fighter’s wife Lyudmila Kuzekmayeva told Reuters, 47-year-old Alexey Kuzekmayev had no military experience.

“Neither my hysteria, nor my tears, nor my persuasion – nothing helped. He simply confronted me a month before I left home. He said, ‘I bought a ticket and I’m leaving.’

One of the most experienced men was 48-year-old Alexander Lazarev, a Russian army veteran who fought in wars with Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s, according to posts by his wife on Wagner’s channel.

She declined to comment. Lazarev appears in many photos on the Russian equivalent of Facebook, VKontakte, wearing a military uniform with symbols associated with several military units.

PARASTAL MERCENARY FORCES

Democratic governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have been toppled in a series of coups since 2020, fueled by anger at corrupt leaders and nearly a decade of failed Western efforts to combat the uprisings that have left thousands dead and millions displaced.

The military junta expelled French and American troops and UN peacekeepers.

In Africa, Wagner emerged in Sudan in 2017 as the undisputed face of Russia’s operations. His businesses soon included protecting African coup leaders, gold mining and fighting jihadists. Wagner also operates in the Central African Republic. He 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 battlefield victory in Ukraine in almost a year, taking Bakhmut. But after his criticism of Russian military leaders and attempting to lead an insurgency in the weeks after Bakhmut’s victory, Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August. The Kremlin dismissed as “absolute lies” the claim by U.S. officials that Putin ordered Prigozhin killed.

Eric Whitaker, the top U.S. envoy to Burkina Faso until his retirement in June, who previously served in Niger, Mali and Chad, said the Putin administration had gained full control of the Wagner brand in the post-Prigozhin era.

“The Africa Corps receives (the Russian government) hard currency payments from host governments for its services, and also generates significant sources of income from gold from its operations in the Sahel,” he said.

Russian mercenary activity has surged in Mali since the creation of the Africa Corps, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a U.S. crisis monitoring group. Based on media reports and social media documentation, the data shows that violent events involving Russian mercenaries have increased by 81% and reported civilian deaths have increased by 65% ​​over the past year, compared with the year before Prigozhin was killed.

Wagner does not publish recruitment figures. Jędrzej Czerep, an analyst at the Warsaw-based think tank Polish Institute of International Affairs, estimated that there are about 6,000 Russian mercenaries serving in Africa, while three diplomatic sources said there are about 1,500-2,000 serving in Mali.

“When Africa Corps started promoting and recruiting, the company was flooded with applications,” Czerep said.

“Being sent to one of the African missions was perceived as much safer than going to Ukraine,” he said.

Tuareg spokesman Ramadane said the rebel alliance was preparing for more clashes.

Further losses could eventually lead to a Russian withdrawal, Tibor Nagy, the top U.S. envoy for Africa, said in 2019 when Wagner withdrew from northern Mozambique months after about a dozen of his men were killed in a conflict with an Islamic State-linked group.

“They got out of there very quickly,” Nagy said.

Wagner has not commented publicly on his plans for Mali.

(Reporting by Fillip Lebedev in London, Felix Light in Tbilisi and Jessica Donati in Dakar; Text by Jessica Donati; Additional reporting by Fadimata Kontao in Bamako, Anna Magdalena Lubowicka in Gdansk and Wang Jiawei; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Frank Jack Daniel)