At the end of July 2024, the Malian armed forces, supported by the PMC Wagner, launched another offensive in the north of the country against the formations of the unrecognised Tuareg Azawad state: this time the fighting took place on the very border with Algeria, in remote desert areas near the town of Tin Zaouatine.

Brief background and timeline

Initially, this operation could only be seen as one of the many stages in the confrontation between the Malian government of Colonel Assimi Goïta and Tuareg separatist groups, which escalated in the summer of 2023. However, probably unexpectedly for many, the success of the rebels, including the deaths of Malian soldiers and representatives of the Russian PMCs, immediately made the events near Tin Zaouatine one of the most discussed topics, whose echoes reached even Russian citizens, and the results were actively interpreted in their favour by various parties: the world even began to talk about the “ukrainian trail“.

The political reality of contemporary Mali is largely shaped by two key events/processes: 1) The consequences of the large-scale Tuareg uprising in 2012 against the continued rule of Bamako in northern Mali, the historical domain of the “desert rulers”; 2) The consequences of two military coups in 2020 and 2021, which brought to power in Mali an interim government led by young army officers, under pressure from international organisations, regional neighbours, Western states and the United States. Under such difficult conditions, there are prerequisites for the expansion, or more precisely, the establishment of relations between Russia and Mali in the field of security and cooperation in the military-industrial complex. The........

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