Russian Mercenaries Executed Civilians in Mali, Watchdog Says
Russia’s Africa Corps killed nine civilians, including four children, in a village in central Mali, Human Rights Watch said, in an operation carried out alongside Malian soldiers. Some were shot as they tried to flee and others detained and executed, the group said, with more than 80 men and boys rounded up and homes burned. HRW accused Mali’s military government of giving the Russian force “a green light to kill civilians”.
The report lifts the lid on the price of Mali’s turn away from the West and towards Moscow, whose mercenaries, rebranded from Wagner to the state-run Africa Corps, are paid in cash and access to the country’s gold and minerals. In exchange, they provide a ruthless counter-insurgency that rights groups say routinely targets civilians alongside the fighters it hunts. That Malian troops were present points to complicity, not merely tolerance, by a junta that has expelled UN peacekeepers and French forces alike. For the Sahel’s civilians, the trade has meant swapping one form of insecurity for another. Watch whether the findings bring any accountability, or simply vanish as others have.