Free Republic

An elite group of Ukrainian drone operators is hunting Russians from desert dugouts across Africa, as Kyiv wages a proxy war to bleed strongman Vladimir Putin’s global army. Moscow has deployed about 5,000 troops across Mali, Sudan and Libya to back coup-installed military dictatorships and warlords since 2020 — as Putin has tried to fill the void left by Western forces’ withdrawal and assert himself as a power player — often in exchange for lucrative mining rights. And Ukraine has worked alongside local rebels to fight off those same Russians forces in an effort to forge new alliances against Moscow....

Mali’s army spokesperson has said Russian soldiers have deployed to the northern city of Timbuktu to train Malian forces at a base vacated by French troops last month amid persistent insecurity in a country where large swaths of territory are out of the government’s control. The Malian government said late last year that “Russian trainers” had arrived in the country, but Bamako and Moscow have so far provided few details on the deployment, including on how many soldiers are involved or the Russian troops’ precise mission. On December 23, a group of Western countries led by former colonial power France,...