NY Times | Mali Massacre | Wagner Group Russian Mercenaries | Putin's Private Killers
Channel: Crimes and Investigations
Date: 2022-06-02

Mali Massacre With A Russian Footprint | Wagner Group Russian Mercenaries. 

#Leakyou #WagnerGroup #RussianMerceneries

Russia has to be stopped. In Mali, Russian mercenaries, working w/ junta forces, executed 300-400 men in a single village.  They killed them in groups of 15, in front of the ones they had captive, waiting their turn. They made the women and children watch.

BAMAKO, Mali — On the last Sunday in March before Ramadan, thousands of merchants and villagers filled the market of Moura, in central Mali, trading cattle in a vast pen and stocking up on spices and vegetables in the town’s sandy alleys.

Suddenly, five low-flying helicopters thrummed overhead, some firing weapons and drawing gunfire in return. Villagers ran for their lives. But there was nowhere to escape: The helicopters were dropping soldiers on the town’s outskirts to block all the exits.

The soldiers were in pursuit of Islamist militants who have been operating in the region for years. Many of the soldiers were Malians, but they were accompanied by white foreigners wearing military fatigues and speaking a language that was neither English nor French, locals said.

The foreigners, according to diplomats, officials and human rights groups, belonged to the Russian paramilitary group known as Wagner.

Over the next five days in Moura, Malian soldiers and their Russian allies looted houses, held villagers captive in a dried-out riverbed and executed hundreds of men, according to eight witnesses from Moura and more than 20 Malian politicians and civil society activists, as well as Western military officials and diplomats.

Both Malian soldiers and foreign mercenaries killed captives at close range, often without interrogating them, based on their ethnicity or clothes, according to witnesses. The foreigners marauded through the town, indiscriminately killing people in houses, stealing jewelry and confiscating cellphones to eliminate any visual evidence.

However, using satellite imagery, The New York Times identified the sites of at least two mass graves, which matched the witnesses’ descriptions of where captives were executed and buried.

The Malian authorities and military did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Mali has been fighting armed militants for the past decade, initially with the help of French and later European forces. But as the relationship has deteriorated between France and the Malian military junta, which seized power last year, French forces are withdrawing from Mali, and the Wagner Group has moved in — a step denounced by 15 European countries and Canada, as well as the United States.

The Wagner Group refers to a network of operatives and companies that serve as what the U.S. Treasury Department has called a “proxy force” of Russia’s ministry of defense. Analysts describe the group as an extension of Russia’s foreign policy through deniable activities, including the use of mercenaries and disinformation campaigns.

Since it appeared in Ukraine in 2014, its operatives have been identified working in Libya, Syria and countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Sudan, and now Mali. They ally with embattled political and military leaders who can pay for their services in cash, or with lucrative mining concessions for precious minerals like gold, diamonds and uranium, according to interviews conducted in recent weeks with dozens of analysts, diplomats and military officials in Africa and Western countries.

Read more about the Wagner Group and its growing operations in Africa.
The Malian authorities hailed the Moura attack as a major victory in their fight against extremist groups, claiming to have killed 203 fighters and arrested more than 50 others, but making no mention of civilian casualties. They have denied the presence of Wagner operatives, saying only that they have a contract with Russia to provide “instructors.”

However, Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov said in May on Italian television that Wagner was present in Mali “on a commercial basis,” providing “security services.”

Witnesses and analysts say the death toll in Moura was between 300 and 400 by their most conservative estimates, with most of the victims civilians.

“From Monday to Thursday, the killings didn’t stop,” said Hamadoun, a tailor working near the market when the helicopters arrived. “The whites and the Malians killed together.”