Russia pledged at the United Nations on Monday to keep providing 'comprehensive assistance' to Mali, where about 1,000 fighters with Russia's Wagner mercenary group are helping the West African state's junta fight an Islamist insurgency.
Russia's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said that bilateral cooperation between Russia and Mali and the military junta's "sovereign choice" of international security partners "are keeping our former Western partners up at night".
"Russia, for its part, will continue to provide Mali and other interested African partners with comprehensive assistance on a bilateral, equal and mutually respectful basis," he told the U.N. Security Council.a decade-long peacekeeping mission in Mali after the military junta abruptly asked the 13,000-strong force to leave - a move the United States said was engineered by the Wagner group.
Mali has struggled to stem the Islamist insurgency that took root following an uprising in 2012. U.N. sanctions monitors reported to the Security Council this month that "in less than a year, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara has almost doubled its areas of control in Mali"."As many of us feared, the transition government's decision to close MINUSMA has already triggered renewed violence on the ground," U.S.
"Additionally, MINUSMA's withdrawal limits the ability of the international community to protect civilians from the predations of Wagner, whose activities contribute to greater insecurity in the country," she said.
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