Mali, Niger cut ties with Ukraine over Russian attack

The military juntas of Mali and Niger have each cut diplomatic relations with Ukraine, after they determined that Kyiv was involved in an operation supporting Tuareg rebels in the north of Mali. The insurgency last month led to the killing of 47 Malian soldiers, and 84 Russian military contractors.

The attack and subsequent diplomatic fallout has raised the first serious concerns that the Russia-Ukraine war, now halfway through its third year, could play out on African soil.

On Sunday, Mali’s military leaders denounced Kyiv’s “support for international terrorism” and its “blatant aggression.”

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said it regretted a “short-sighted and hasty” decision taken “without conducting a thorough study of the facts and circumstances of the incident in the north of Mali.”

But on Ukrainian television, Andriy Yusov, spokesman of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), stated that the rebels had received “the necessary information” leading to “a successful operation against Russian war criminals.”

While most African governments have resisted Bamako’s call to denounce the “neo-nazi and heinous” Ukrainian authorities, the government of Niger, also led by a military junta, announced late on Tuesday that it is also severing its diplomatic ties with Kyiv. Niamey criticized “the silence of other African countries and the African Union” in the face of “malicious attempts to turn the Sahel into a theater of ideological and strategic confrontation”

The West African bloc Ecowas, which Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso quit earlier this year to form a separate regional bloc, also expressed its “strong disapproval and condemnation of any foreign interference in the region.”