According to the Le Monde, the assault, launched on April 25 by the Azawad Liberation Front (ALF) and the jihadist group Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), struck simultaneously across multiple locations — including Bamako's military district of Kati, the airport at Sévaré, and Gao — marking the largest rebel offensive in Mali since 2012. By Sunday, the pro-independence flag flew over Kidal's fort, the same spot where Wagner mercenaries had triumphantly raised their skull-and-crossbones banner in November 2023.
Moscow's local proxy, Africa Corps — the successor to Wagner, now operating under direct Russian defence ministry oversight — struck a separate deal with ALF forces to secure a safe withdrawal from Kidal. According to an ALF official cited by Le Monde journalists Marie Jégo and Morgane Le Cam, at least 400 Africa Corps personnel were escorted north to Tessalit by rebel fighters on Sunday; Malian soldiers, by contrast, were left behind as prisoners. Africa Corps later confirmed on its X account that its units "present and fighting in Kidal have left the locality."
The weekend violence also claimed a figure at the very heart of the junta: Defence Minister General Sadio Camara, the chief architect of Mali's Russian partnership, was killed when a car bomb destroyed his residence in Kati on Saturday morning, confirmed by France 24. Camara had been the driving force behind inviting Wagner into Mali and, according to Le Monde, was reportedly resistant to the later transition to the more institutionalised Africa Corps structure imposed by Moscow after Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin's death in 2023.
Analysts see the events as exposing fundamental weaknesses in the Kremlin's Sahel strategy. "The attacks are a major blow to Russia," Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told the Associated Press. Researcher Adam Sandor of Germany's University of Bayreuth, quoted in Le Monde by Jégo and Le Cam, noted that JNIM's offer to spare Africa Corps fighters — in exchange for non-aggression — signals the jihadist group's effort to recast itself as a "legitimate and pragmatic actor" open to dialogue. Russia had pledged to deliver security where French and UN forces had failed; the fall of Kidal suggests that promise is rapidly unravelling.
With roughly 2,500 Russian personnel spread across some 20 bases in Mali, and fighting continuing across the country's north and centre, the fate of Moscow's broader Sahel project now hangs in the balance. The Alliance of Sahel States — linking Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso under Russian patronage — was built on the premise that Moscow could succeed where the West had not. If Russia cannot defend its closest ally, its model of trading military muscle for mineral access and geopolitical influence across the region faces an existential test.