A hundred troops of the new Russian Africa Corps touched down in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on Wednesday, January 24, 2024. According to Bloomberg, 200 more Russian troops are scheduled to arrive to assist in providing security for the Burkinabe military junta strongman Captain Ibrahim Traore, to train his armed forces, and to accompany them on patrols in dangerous areas. The Africa Corps replaces Wagner Group, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash on August 23, 2023, exactly two months after he temporarily rebelled against the administration of President Vladimir Putin. As stated in Reuters, “Photos posted to Telegram on Wednesday by African Initiative, a pro-Kremlin Russian news agency that covers African affairs, showed men in army fatigues unloading equipment from a plane with a Russian flag and a blurred number on its tail. The aircraft pictured on the sunbaked tarmac was an Il-76, long the workhorse of the Russian military.” Russia reopened its embassy in Burkina Faso in December, more than three decades after it had been shuttered due to previous Burkinabe regimes’ closeness with the nation’s former colonizer France. On November 13, 2023, the Malian Armed Forces, assisted by Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, retook the city of Kidal, the stronghold of the Tuareg rebels for 10 years. During a meeting in Moscow between Russian Deputy Defense Ministers Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Alexander Fomin and Nigerien military junta Defense Minister Salifu Modi on January 16, the parties agreed to military cooperation in the Sahel. Similarly, on January 23, Chadian military junta leader Idriss Deby visited Putin in Moscow. During the televised meeting, Putin promised to help Deby stabilize his country.
