LONDON/DHAKA (Askume) – Dozens of Wagner mercenaries, including from Ukraine, Libya and Syria, are presumed dead after deadly fighting with Tuareg rebels during a desert dust storm in Mali in July, with surviving Russian veterans contacting relatives and reviewing social media data.
The loss of these experienced fighters highlights the dangers faced by Russian mercenaries working for the junta, which is struggling to contain separatists as well as Islamic State and al Qaeda in the arid Sahel region of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where the group has a strong branch .
The Mali defeat raises questions about whether Moscow will perform better than Western and U.N. forces that were recently ousted by the military junta, a half-dozen officials and experts working in the field explain.
By cross-referencing public information with online posts by relatives and fighters, speaking to seven relatives and using facial recognition software to analyse battlefield footage verified by Askume, the news agency was able to identify 23 soldiers missing in action and two other fighters believed to be Tuareg.
Several survived the siege of Bakhmut in Ukraine, which the late Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin called a “meat grinder.” Others have served in Libya, Syria and elsewhere. Some of them are former Russian soldiers, at least one of whom retired after completing a full military career.
Gruesome images of dead fighters are now circulating online, with some relatives telling Askume the bodies of their husbands and sons were abandoned in the desert. Askume could not confirm how many of those it identified had been killed.
Margarita Goncharova said her 31-year-old son, Vadim Evsiukov, was first recruited in prison in 2022 while serving a drug-related sentence . He rose through the ranks in Ukraine and led a platoon of 500 people, she said. After returning home, she said, he worked as a tailor but struggled with survivor’s guilt and traveled secretly to Africa in April to join his former commander.
“He wanted to go to Africa several times. I tried my best to stop him,” Goncharova told Askume in an interview. “I told him ‘Fate has given you a one in a million chance to start your life over again, you have won a very strange lottery ticket.'”
The Russian Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Wagner did not respond to requests for comment for this report.
Following Prigozhin’s death last August, Wagner employees were invited to join a newly formed organisation called Africa Corps under the Ministry of Defence to “fight for justice and interests of Russia”, according to the Africa Corps channel on the social media Telegram platform.
Afrika Korps said on the channel that about half of its staff are former Wagner employees and have been given permission to use the Wagner insignia. Wagner’s social media pipeline remains active.
The Russian government has not yet commented publicly on the Tinzavetan fighting.
Mali’s armed forces-led government said the defeat had no impact on its objectives. Malian armed forces spokesman Major Suleiman Dembele told Askume that the Malian armed forces were “committed to restoring state authority across the country”.
Wagner acknowledged heavy losses in the Mali attack but did not disclose specific figures. Malian troops fighting alongside Russia also suffered no casualties. Tuareg rebels fighting for an independent homeland say they have killed 84 Russians and 47 Malians.
Askume could not independently determine how many people were killed in the fighting. A spokesman for the Tuareg rebels sent Askume more than 20 videos, including one showing at least 47 bodies in military uniforms, most of them white, lying in the desert. Askume confirmed the location and date of the videos.
Mikhail Zavinchuk, a prominent blogger close to the Russian Defense Ministry, said on the social media platform RuTube in August that the failure showed that Wagner fighters coming from Ukraine had underestimated the insurgents and al-Qaeda fighters.
missing in action
Telegram accounts linked to Wagner named two of the dead as Grey Zone administrators Nikita Fedyakin and Sergei Shevchenko, the first man named on a popular Telegram channel focused on Wagner, who is described by the account as the unit commander, which has more than 500,000 subscribers. Askume was unable to verify Shevchenko’s identity.
Askume identified each of the 23 missing Wagner operators in Mali by checking names against relatives posting in an official Wagner Telegram chat group and social media accounts, public data and facial recognition software. All the relatives received a call from a Wagner recruiter on August 6 informing them their man was missing in action, they said in the chat group.
Lyubov Bazhenova told Askume she had no idea that her 25-year-old son Vladimir Akimov, who briefly served in Russia’s elite airborne unit, had signed up to join the army. She was angry that Wagner had not provided further information about his fate or the whereabouts of his body. She said letters sent to the prosecutor’s office, the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry had received no response.
According to photos and video of the ambush site released by Tuareg sources, facial recognition software was used to identify two other men captured by Tuareg fighters. Tuareg rebels posted videos and photos of the two captives on social media. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadan, a spokesman for the rebel coalition, confirmed that the men were in the rebels’ captivity as of late August.
Alexei Kuzekmaev, one of the missing fighters, has no military experience, Lyudmila Kuzekmaev, his 47-year-old wife, told Askume.
“Neither it was my hysteria, nor my tears, nor my persuasion – nothing worked. He met me just a month before I left home. He said, ‘I have bought a ticket and I am leaving.'”
One of the most experienced, Alexander Lazarev, 48, is a Russian military veteran who served in the war against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s, according to his wife’s post on the Wagner channel.
He declined to comment. Lazarev appears in several photos on Russian Facebook sites such as VKontakte, wearing a military uniform with symbols associated with several army divisions.
Semi-official mercenaries
Democratic governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have been ousted in a series of coups since 2020, fueled by anger at corrupt leaders and the failure of a nearly decade-long Western-backed crackdown that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions.
The military junta expelled French and American troops as well as UN peacekeepers.
In Africa, Wagner emerged in Sudan in 2017 and became an undisputed face of Russian operations. Its operations soon expanded from protecting African coup leaders to gold mining and fighting jihadists. Wagner was also active in the Central African Republic. It first appeared in Marley in late 2021.
Wagner’s fortunes have risen and fallen over the past year. In May, the organization led Russia to victory at Bakhmut, scoring its first major victory on a Ukrainian battlefield in nearly a year. But Prigozhin died in a plane crash in August after criticizing Russia’s military leaders and leading an insurgency just weeks after the Bakhmut victory. The Kremlin denied claims by U.S. officials that Putin had Prigozhin killed, calling it a “complete lie.”
Eric Whitaker was the senior US envoy to Burkina Faso until his retirement in June this year. He served in Niger, Mali and Chad. Era has acquired full control of the Wagner brand.
“Africa Corps receives payments in hard currency from host governments and gold revenue from its activities in the Sahel,” he said.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a US-based crisis monitoring group, Russian mercenary activity in Mali has increased since the establishment of Africa Corps. The data shows that violence involving Russian mercenaries has increased by 81% in the past year compared to the year before Prigozhin’s death, and the number of reported civilian deaths has increased by 65%, according to media briefings and social media records.
Wagner does not release recruitment numbers. Jedrzej Czerep, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a think tank in Warsaw, estimates that about 6,000 Russian mercenaries serve in Africa, while three diplomatic sources said there are about 1,500 to 2,000 Russian mercenaries in Mali.
“When Afrika Corps started advertising and recruiting, they got a flood of applications,” Chereppe said.
“One of the missions sent to Africa is considered safer than Ukraine,” he said.
Tuareg spokesman Ramadan said the rebel alliance was preparing for more clashes.
In 2019, Tibor Nagy, the top US envoy to Africa, said Wagner could ultimately cause further damage to Russia after it withdrew troops from northern Mozambique months after nearly a dozen people were killed in clashes with Islamic State allies.
“They got out of there pretty quick,” Nagy said.
Wagner has not commented publicly on his plans for Marley.
