Wagner Group lost veteran fighters during Mali ambush in setback to Russias Africa campaign

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 defense 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 analyze 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 prison where 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 ...