African state calls for action against Ukraine-backed militants
The foreign minister of Mali has urged the United Nations Security Council to take action against Ukraine, accusing it of supporting militant groups terrorising the Sahel region. Abdoulaye Diop made the demand on Sunday at the annual UN General Assembly session in New York.
Ukraine has been embroiled in a diplomatic crisis in West Africa since July, when Tuareg insurgents killed dozens of Wagner Group private military personnel and Malian forces in an ambush in northern Mali.
At the time, Andrey Yusov, the spokesman for Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, said the rebels had “received necessary information… which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals.” The statement was widely interpreted as a claim of direct responsibility, but the Ukrainian government later denied providing any support to Tuareg militants.
Yusov’s comments in late July sparked outrage, prompting the West African regional bloc ECOWAS to warn against any foreign interference that threatens the region’s peace and security. The Malian military government and its ally in Niger severed diplomatic relations with Ukraine in response.
On August 19, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger jointly wrote to the UN Security Council, demanding “appropriate measures” against Kiev for its “subversive actions,” which “constitute the involvement of foreign state sponsors in the expansion of terrorism in the region.”
In his speech to the General Assembly over the weekend, Mali’s foreign minister went on to thank countries and the UN as a whole for showing solidarity to the landlocked state following a terrorist attack on a military training school in the capital, Bamako, last week.
However, he criticized the lack of action against those responsible for “manipulating terrorist groups and destabilizing sovereign states.”
“I appeal for actions to follow words and... for all states to act in accordance with their international obligations to ensure that the perpetrators of such crimes, as well as their financial backers and sponsors, are brought to justice,” Abdoulaye Diop stated.
“We call on the Security Council to assume its responsibilities in the face of this deliberate choice by Ukraine, in order to prevent these subversive actions that threaten our stability,” he added.
Last year, Bamako, Niamey, and Ouagadougou formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and have since turned to Russia for security assistance in combating a jihadist insurgency that has gripped the region for years.
All three countries under military rule have severed defense ties with their former colonial power, France, citing French forces’ alleged failure to resolve the conflict. The US army has also been forced to withdraw from Niger, which had served as a key base for Washington’s counter-terrorism operations in the Sahel region.
