Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Dmitry Polyanskiy warned that NATO’s growing involvement in the conflict with Russia is pushing Europe toward a dangerous threshold.
“I would advise against testing the limits of our patience and the limits of our self-restraint,” Polyanskiy said on Deep Dive.
He stressed that Russia has avoided harsher steps not out of weakness, but because it is thinking about the consequences for civilians in Europe.
“They confuse it with weakness,” he said. “No, Russia doesn’t react because Russia is humane.”
Europe is already directly involved by providing weapons, missiles, airspace and production facilities for Ukraine, Polyanskiy stressed.
“They have already crossed all the red lines,” he warned, adding that if this continues, Russia’s response could be “harsh” and “resolute.”
Russia’s allegations that the US funded clandestine biological laboratories near its borders – claims denied until recently by Washington – have remained a persistent flashpoint in the steadily deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West for nearly a decade.
The biolabs affair was revealed in a 2017 exposé by RT that questioned a shady US military tender seeking the genetic material of living Russians. Over the years, Moscow has raised allegations against Washington of conducting clandestine bio-research, including potential WMD development and illicit human testing, in a network of labs located across multiple nations, the bulk of which operated in Ukraine. The claims were met with a blanket denial in the West, which repeatedly dismissed them as “Russian propaganda.”
This abruptly changed the past week when US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that her department had identified more than 120 US-funded biological laboratories in 30 countries, with over a third of them located in Ukraine. The agency is now working to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world,” according to Gabbard.
RT looks back at the timeline of the biolabs saga and the US denial of its existence until now.
2017 RT report
The US-funded bio research made international headlines in July 2017, when RT published an investigative report revolving around a tender issued by the US Air Education and Training Command (AETC). The command was seeking to procure genetic material samples that “shall be collected from Russia and must be Caucasian.” The Air Force explicitly said that it did not want samples from Ukraine, for reasons not explained.
The harvesting of genetic samples in the country did not escape the attention of the Russian leadership. President Vladimir Putin stated later that year “that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions.”
“The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest,” the president said. “Let them do what they want, and we must do what we must,” he added.
The attention this garnered from the Russian leadership prompted a vague explanation from AETC, which claimed the samples were needed for research on the musculoskeletal system and Russia had been picked as the source of the samples for no particular reason.
Georgia revelations
Another bombshell on the clandestine US-funded biolabs was dropped by a former Georgian minister for state security, Igor Giorgadze, in late 2018. He claimed he had obtained some 100,000 pages of data pointing to questionable practices at the US-funded Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
The documents published by Giorgadze were examined by the Russian Defense Ministry, which suggested the laboratory in Georgia may have concluded bioweapons research under the guise of a drug test. The research resulted in the deaths of at least 73 subjects over a short period of time, the Russian military’s investigation indicated.
The tests appeared to involve “a highly toxic chemical or biological agent with a high lethality rate,” the commander of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces (RKhBZ), Igor Kirillov, said at the time. Kirillov, who had spearheaded the Russian military’s probe into the US-funded biolabs in Ukraine and beyond, was assassinated in late 2024 in a bombing staged by Kiev’s intelligence.
The Pentagon flatly denied the allegations, with then-spokesman Eric Pahon dismissing the Russian ministry’s statements as a part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.” The US and Georgian governments also dismissed the claims made by Giorgadze, describing them as “absurd.”
Ukraine conflict
The escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022 marked a new turn in the biolabs saga. While Moscow seized additional evidence of questionable research activities conducted in secretive facilities dotting Ukraine, the West entered a full-denial mode, bluntly dismissing any Russian statement on the matter as “propaganda.”
Early in the conflict, Russian troops seized thousands of pages of documents from labs in the Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kherson regions. The Russian military has been releasing the materials in batches while continuing an internal investigation and ultimately concluding in 2023 that “the US, under the guise of ensuring global biosecurity, conducted dual-use research, including the creation of biological weapons components, in close proximity to Russian borders.”
“The credibility of information provided by the Kremlin is in general very doubtful and low,” EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said at the time. “Russian disinformation has a track record of promoting manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged ‘secret labs.’”
The Biden administration took a similar defensive stance, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki calling the allegations “preposterous” and accusing Moscow of plotting to use “chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine or to create a false flag operation using them.” John Kirby, then-Pentagon spokesman, also branded the Russian allegations “absurd,” “laughable,” and a “bunch of malarkey.”
“There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” Kirby told reporters at the time.
The announced investigation into secret US overseas biolabs by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) could end up being more of an internal compliance review than a sweeping exposé, experts told Sputnik.
“This is less about legal prosecution and more about the administration asserting control over the ‘Deep State’ bureaucracy and signaling a broader rapprochement with Moscow by validating some of their long-standing security grievances,” says London-based foreign policy analyst Adriel Kasonta.
When it comes to accountability, the development, spearheaded by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, “suggests a move toward ‘America First’ oversight rather than an admission of criminal activity by previous officials,” the pundit believes.
“If the ODNI review reveals that US agencies lacked sufficient oversight, failed to properly manage the security risks of funding pathogen research abroad, or lacked transparency, ‘accountability’ will likely take the form of domestic policy adjustments, congressional hearings, and stricter funding guidelines,” says Marco Marsili, associate researcher at the Center for International Studies (CEI-Iscte).
Earlier this week, Tulsi Gabbard announced an investigation into more than 120 US biolabs operating across 30-plus countries, including 40 in Ukraine, with a focus on potential “gain-of-function” research.
The probe came on the heels of the indictment of a former advisor to top US health official Anthony Fauci, accused of unlawfully concealing federal records tied to the origins of COVID-19.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte wants NATO members to cough up 0.25% of their GDP for Ukraine. This figure seems minuscule, but how much hard-earned taxpayer money does it add up to?
Rutte floated the idea at a closed-door meeting of NATO ambassadors last month, and will likely be raised at the bloc’s annual summit in Ankara in July, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed NATO diplomats.
How much money does Rutte want to give Ukraine?
The combined GDP of NATO’s 32 member states adds up to $57.2 trillion, according to the bloc’s figures from 2025. Assuming that the US backs Rutte’s proposal, Ukraine stands to receive a windfall of $143 billion, or more than three times the amount of military aid it received from its Western donors last year.
To put Rutte’s demand in perspective, $143 billion is:
$16 billion more than Germany’s 2026 defense budget ($127 billion)
Larger than the combined economies of Latvia and Lithuania ($130 billion)
Four times what the US spent on developing the atomic bomb ($35.5 billion, adjusted for inflation)
Almost six times what the US has spent on the war with Iran to date ($25 billion)
Enough to buy more Patriot missile batteries than currently exist (around 200)
This princely sum is separate to the 5% of GDP that NATO requires its members to spend on their own militaries, and separate to the unrepayable, debt-financed loan of €90 billion ($105 billion) that the EU has already started to funnel to Kiev.
Whose idea was this?
Unsurprisingly, the idea was first suggested by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. “Ukraine is part of Europe’s security, and we want 0.25% of the GDP of a particular partner country to be allocated to our defense industry and domestic production,” he told reporters last June.
Is every NATO member on board?
Rutte’s aim is to balance military aid to Ukraine among member states, as to date, Nordic countries like Denmark and Baltic countries have been making outsized contributions compared to some of the bloc’s larger economies. Denmark, for example, has given 3.25% of its entire GDP to Kiev since 2022, while Germany has given 0.55%. On the lower end of the scale, Hungary has given the smallest share of any NATO country at 0.04%.
France and the UK are reportedly unhappy with the proposal, even though both nations already exceed the 0.25% target. London and Paris both refused to comment when contacted by Politico. Furthermore, some unnamed EU countries reportedly want their contributions to the aforementioned €90 billion EU loan counted towards Rutte’s target.
Where will the money go?
Western military aid to Ukraine is typically spent on purchasing weapons from abroad, paying military salaries, and the research, development, and manufacture of arms within Ukraine. Zelensky insists that the money will go to Ukraine’s defense industry and domestic production – a sector that is a hotbed of corruption and graft.
In late April, surveillance tapes revealed that Timur Mindich, a business magnate and associate of Zelensky known as ‘Zelensky’s wallet’, was secretly running one of the country’s largest defense contractors from exile in Israel, and colluding with former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to secure government contracts.
All but one of Ukraine’s wartime defense chiefs have been tied to corruption and bid-rigging scandals, Mindich is wanted on separate embezzlement charges, and Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, was arrested in May and accused of a connected money laundering scheme.
It will likely be up to individual donor countries to stipulate how their 0.25% is spent. However, RT has already covered some of the endemic rot within the Ukrainian defense sector, and the picture so far suggests that whatever the Western taxpayer sends to Kiev, there is no telling how much will be skimmed off the top along the way.
Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina has announced her resignation amid a government crisis caused by an incident involving Ukrainian kamikaze drones hitting an oil depot near the Russian border.
Silina announced the decision at a press briefing on Thursday. Just hours earlier, Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis, a member of Silina’s liberal-conservative Unity party, stated that the prime minister has no intention of leaving office. Meanwhile, the opposition was planning a procedural maneuver to circumvent the five-day pause required under Latvian law before a request for a no-confidence vote is granted.
The crisis in the Baltic state was triggered by an incident last week in which two Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones hit an empty oil depot near the town of Rezekne, around 40 km from the Russian border. No casualties were reported on the ground.
Defense Minister Andris Spruds, who has supported Ukraine’s attacks against Russia and called the incident regrettable but understandable, resigned over the weekend. The Progressives party member said he did not want the military to be dragged into political squabbling.
MP Andris Suvajevs, who leads the Progressives parliamentary faction, stated earlier in the day that the ruling coalition was certain to collapse if a no-confidence motion is put to a vote. The prime minister was expected to take part in a session of parliament, but instead invited the media to her office to announce her resignation. She blamed “political jealousy and narrow party interests” for the crisis.
Moscow has accused NATO nations of tacitly allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to conduct strikes on targets in northwestern Russia, particularly oil export terminals in Leningrad Region. Officials in several countries where incidents involving Ukrainian drones were reported since mid-March have expressed concerns with Kiev’s military planning.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said he told Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky that Helsinki regards Ukrainian aircraft entering its airspace as unacceptable. Estonian Defense Minster Hanno Pevkur said the Ukrainians should “keep their drones away from our territory [and] control their activities better.”
MOSCOW – Russia does not rule out that the West is preparing another “bloody hoax” in Ukraine similar to the one arranged in the city of Bucha in 2022, Yulia Zhdanova, the head of the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said on Wednesday.
NATO representatives have held three meetings with directors, screenwriters and producers working in the cinema industry in Brussels, Los Angeles and Paris, and planned a next meeting with members of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Zhdanova said.
“The letter received by those invited to these events mentions ‘three projects’ that are already in development. Perhaps NATO countries are once again preparing for another bloody hoax? For instance, like the one staged in Bucha in April 2022,” Zhdanova said at the 1136th meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Cooperation.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in April 2022 that the footage of Bucha published by Kiev was a provocation. The ministry said that not a single local resident was subject to violence during the time that the town was under Russian control.
All Russian troops withdrew from Bucha by March 30, 2022, leaving the northward roads to and from the town open to traffic, while Ukrainian troops shelled the southern outskirts with large-caliber artillery, tanks and multiple launch rocket systems.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia rejected any accusations of involvement in the alleged deaths in Bucha and warned world leaders against jumping to conclusions without first considering Moscow’s arguments.
Springtime in Ukraine melted snow turning farmland and dirt roads into deep slush that vehicles could not cross. The ground has dried and Russian forces quicken their advance and will reach the big Dnieper River this summer. The most likely crossing point is the city of Zaporizhzhia with a population of 700,000.
It is unclear if Ukraine will fight to defend Zaporizhzhia or fall back behind the Dnieper River. If Ukraine evacuates this city, its big buildings could provide a great fortress. But Ukraine has nowhere for its 700,000 people to live and not enough transport to move them anyway. In addition, as Russian forces soon approach, their drones will patrol Zaporizhzhia bridges and attack any transport, effectively blockading the city. Ukrainian forces could become trapped on the east side of the river.
It will be interesting to see if NATO can destroy all the Dnieper bridges despite opposition from many Ukrainians, who may disrupt plans with police and military units. The Russians want them to support major forces once they cross the river. The Ukrainians know these bridges are vital national assets and not easily replaced. If all bridges are destroyed, this can delay the Russian advance for months.
A right-wing Austrian politician has demanded that the country’s Finance Ministry explain how nearly $22 billion in cash and gold was shipped to Ukraine from Austria since 2022 without triggering concerns about money laundering or regulatory oversight.
In a statement published on Sunday, Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) Secretary General Christian Hafenecker called out what he described as Vienna’s “two-class justice system” for overlooking massive payments to Kiev, while keeping a tight hold on taxpayers’ purse strings.
“We’re not talking about play money here: 1,030 registered cash and gold shipments, around €12 billion ($14 billion) plus $7.75 billion, physically transported over 1,300 kilometers into the war zone,” Hafenecker said.
“And the responsible finance minister simply tells me… ‘We know nothing, we’re not investigating anything, we haven’t collected any information.’ That’s not an answer, that’s dereliction of duty,” he added.
By comparison, Austrian money laundering rules require a private citizen withdrawing as little as €12,000 from an inherited account to prove the origin of the funds, and any person crossing the EU’s external border with more than €10,000 in cash must declare it, Hafenecker said. “This is a two-class justice system in finance.”
The politician demanded full disclosure on all cash shipments from Austria to Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict, a full audit by the country’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority, and a report by the Austrian Money Laundering Reporting Office in parliament.
Earlier this year, the Euroskeptic FPO party demanded that Vienna cut all financial aid to Ukraine, denouncing the country as a corrupt “bottomless pit,” following a wave of high-level embezzlement scandals in Kiev.
Major probes by Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-graft agencies have implicated senior officials in Vladimir Zelensky’s government since last year. Two ministers and the Ukrainian leader’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, stepped down following the massive scandal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has slammed the current leadership in Kiev, calling it a “criminal gang” sitting on “golden potties,” and interested far more in personal enrichment than in the fate of ordinary Ukrainians.
France did not really leave Mali. It changed tactics and found new hands to carry the gun. After being pushed out by a military government that turned toward Russia, China, and the wider Global South, Paris appears to have re-entered the war through Ukrainian military intelligence channels, long-standing Tuareg networks, and a battlefield configuration in which separatist rebels and Al-Qaedaʼs Sahel branch were hitting the same state enemy at the same time.
The late-April attacks in Mali said something larger about the Sahel. A former colonial power that had been shown the door was suddenly back in the frame, leaning on intermediaries and the momentum of jihadist advances to weaken a government that had chosen Russian support, Chinese weapons, and the language of anti-colonial independence over its old dependence on Paris.
Paris returns through the back door
The sequence is clear. On 25 April, coordinated attacks struck Kati, Gao, Kidal, Sévaré and other strategic points in Mali. Defense Minister Sadio Camara, one of the central figures in Bamako’s post-French realignment and often described as Moscow’s man in the junta, was killed in an attack on his residence. The capital was shaken, roads toward Bamako came under pressure, and in the north, the insurgents advanced as Russian fighters and Malian forces lost ground. Four days later, while the government was still counting its dead, Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, spokesman for the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, surfaced in Paris and met French security and defence representatives while demanding that Russian forces leave Mali. That alone should have set off alarms from Bamako to Brussels.
French media then supplied the missing bridge. Radio Télévision Luxembourg, RTL, reported that France was relying on French-speaking Ukrainian soldiers, including former Foreign Legion personnel, to provide operational support on the ground in Mali in coordination with Tuareg rebels. The report was explicit enough to describe a French effort to avoid direct cooperation with jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda by using Ukrainian relays instead. The same investigation recalled that at the beginning of 2025, Ukrainian military intelligence had presented a detailed plan to French authorities to help dislodge the juntas in the Sahel region and roll back Russian influence. Paris supposedly hesitated at first on security grounds. From where things stand now, the April operation feels less like an improvised response than the delayed execution of that proposal.
For readers unfamiliar with Mali, one fact matters more than any other. This is a large Sahel state that was once a core part of France’s post-colonial sphere of influence. After coups in 2020 and 2021, the new authorities pushed out French troops, challenged the old Françafrique order, and brought in Russian security support while deepening ties with non-Western partners. That made Mali a test case in Africa’s attempt to break with inherited dependency. Seen from that angle, the April offensive was more than just local tensions between armed factions. In fact, it was part of a wider struggle over who gets to decide the political future of the Sahel.
The offensive that exposed the convergence
The April 25 offensive laid bare the forces converging against Bamako. Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), better known as JNIM, claimed major attacks around the south and center. The FLA and allied Tuareg formations pushed in the north. Together they created the sense of a government under siege, with one arm of the offensive squeezing the capital and another unravelling the junta’s hold on strategic northern towns. JNIM is not a vague insurgent label. It is Al-Qaeda’s official branch in the Sahel, born from a 2017 merger that brought togetherAnsar Dine, AQIMʼs Sahara branch, al-Murabitoon and the Macina Liberation Frontunder the leadership of Iyad Ag Ghali, a veteran Tuareg commander now wanted by the International Criminal Court.
That reality becomes significant, especially when the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) is so often presented in softer terms, as if it were merely a separatist front pursuing legitimate local grievances. The FLA, founded in late 2024 in Tinzaouaten from a reorganization of Azawad movements, draws on a long history of Tuareg rebellions in northern Mali. Its public face is political and diplomatic, and its battlefield behaviour tells a much sharper story. In the April assault, it moved in the same strategic rhythm as JNIM, benefiting from the firepower, shock value, and confusion generated by Al-Qaeda’s Sahel network.
The north was especially revealing. Kidal, the symbolic heart of Tuareg politics and rebellion, fell back under FLA control after Russian Africa Corps contractors and Malian forces withdrew. Accounts describe negotiated departures, seized matériel, and a humiliating loss for Bamako and its Russian backers. Africa Corps units left behind vehicles and equipment while seeking safe passage out of a town they had retaken from Tuareg groups only a few years earlier. In Bamako’s orbit, meanwhile, JNIM tightened pressure with threats to block access roads and attacks designed to create the perception of a capital edging toward siege. To supporters of the insurgency, the junta looked fragile, but to anyone watching external interference, the alignment of interests was impossible to ignore.
Much of Western coverage flattened this into a familiar story about state weakness and local instability. That framing leaves out the politically explosive part. These attacks came after two years of mounting accusations from Mali and its Sahel allies that Ukraine was aiding anti-state armed factions and that France had never fully abandoned its northern networks. Put next to Ramadane’s Paris visit and RTL’s reporting on French support through Ukrainian channels, the April offensive starts to read less like a sudden collapse than the military expression of a proxy design that had been taking shape for some time.
Ukraine’s war spills into the desert
Ukraine’s place in this story is not incidental. It is one of the clearest windows into how the war with Russia has spilled into Africa. In 2024, reporting from Le Monde described Ukrainian links with northern Malian rebels and said Ukrainian operatives had trained Tuareg fighters to use drones. That reporting was reinforced by statements from Tuareg figures themselves, who acknowledged contacts with Ukrainians, and by later accounts of drone know-how and explosive FPV tactics moving into the Sahel theatre. Mali cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine in August 2024 after comments from a Ukrainian intelligence spokesman were interpreted in Bamako as an admission of involvement in the Tinzaouaten ambush that killed large numbers of Wagner and Malian personnel.
In that July 2024 ambush near Tinzaouaten, Tuareg separatists claimed to have killed 84 Wagner operatives and 47 Malian soldiers. Ukraine’s own military intelligence spokesman then boasted that its services had supplied the “essential intelligence, and not just intelligence” that made the operation possible.
Tinzaouaten already carried the shape of what came later, and showed that Russian assets in Mali could be hit through a combination of local insurgents, drone warfare, and outside intelligence support, leaving Moscow’s contractors exposed far from their main war. By 2026, those methods had grown more polished. Reports on rebels’ use of FPV systems, including fibre-optic drones that resisted jamming and adapted commercial platforms, pointed to a battlefield increasingly shaped by techniques honed over eastern Ukraine. Russian and Malian convoys were taking fire from above in areas where state air superiority had once seemed secure.
Regional coverage and Sahel sources have since pointed to Algeria as the state that might have helped make that Ukrainian support physically possible long before the April offensive. Niger had already moved into Russia’s security orbit by then, which suggests Algerian territory and networks as the only realistic corridor for covert assistance to reach Tuareg fighters in northern Mali.The same Algeria that has spent years mediating Tuareg affairs, hosting peace talks and cultivating influence over Iyad Ag Ghali’s environment, seems to be quietly repairing relations with both Paris and Washington.
For Kyiv, the logic is straightforward. Russia’s Africa Corps is both a military instrument and a geopolitical symbol, securing mining sites and political partnerships across a belt of African states. Hitting it in Mali weakens Moscow’s position abroad while demonstrating that Ukraine can impose costs on Russia beyond Europe. For France, Ukrainian projection in the Sahel has a different value; primarily because it opens a way to hurt Russia’s African network and destabilize the junta without visibly redeploying French troops or sitting down with jihadist commanders.
RTL’s report on French-speaking Ukrainian ex-Legionnaires operating as intermediaries is powerful precisely because it solves a practical problem. Paris can guide and assist operations that serve its interests while insisting that no French soldier is on the ground. The Ukrainians provide deniability, military expertise, and a shared anti-Russian mission. The Tuareg rebellion provides local cover and established terrain knowledge, while JNIM provides the battlefield weight that neither France nor Ukraine could openly supply themselves. Taken together, the result is a war in which Malian sovereignty and Russian presence are being tested by actors who will never stand behind the same podium but who are clearly useful to one another on the ground.
France’s long shadow and the new division of labour
The events of this year did not emerge in a vacuum. Across Mali and the wider Sahel, accusations that France manipulates armed Islamist-adjacent networks have circulated for years. Some claims are stronger than others, while some remain allegations. However, put together, they form a political memory that explains why Bamako and its allies quickly read the April offensive as more than a domestic insurgent wave.
French president Emmanuel Macron visits the troops of France’s Barkhane counter-terrorism operation in Africa’s Sahel region in Gao, northern Mali, 19 May 2017
One of the hardest facts in that longer history is the ransom trail. A decade ago, a major New York Times investigation found that European governments had pumped large sums into Al-Qaeda-linked groups through ransom arrangements and that France was among the major payers. French and other European hostages taken in the Sahara and Sahel were released after opaque deals in which governments denied paying, but local intermediaries and US officials said otherwise. Reporting from the same period described France as one of the champions of ransom payments to Al-Qaeda affiliates in North and West Africa. The practical outcome pointed towards networks that abducted Western nationals gained money, leverage, and survivability from transactions tied directly or indirectly to French state interests.
In Bamako, those revelations sit on top of a thicker layer of suspicion. The Malian outlet L’Aube accused Paris of effectively financing JNIM through ransom payments, alleging that France paid between 12 and 13 million euros for the release of Olivier Dubois and Jeffrey Woodke and that the money was used by the group to buy arms and ammunition. Niger‘s authorities later levelled similar charges, with General Abdourahamane Tchiani accusing France of pouring several billion CFA francs into armed groups across the Sahel and using Nigerian intelligence channels for training, equipment and financing linked to terrorism. Against that backdrop, RTL’s talk of a new hierarchy of enemies in Mali lands with much greater force. France avoids direct contact with Al-Qaeda’s men by working through Ukrainian and Tuareg intermediaries, yet accepts a configuration that strengthens the jihadists on the ground.
Then came the accusations from Mali itself. In 2021, Prime Minister Choguel Maïga told Russian media that France had created an enclave in Kidal, barred the Malian army from entering, and taken deputies of Ansar Dine’s leader to form a new armed group trained by French officers. Although those claims were denied and never fully proven in public, they reflected a widespread belief in Mali that France’s northern policy was always selective, that some armed actors were enemies only until they became useful, and that counterterrorism language had long concealed a hierarchy of interests. When RTL later explained that France now limits its operational support to Ukrainian relays to avoid direct contact with jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda, it gave that older suspicion a fresh and chilling plausibility.
A new division of labour is also coming into view across the Sahel battlefield. JNIM supplies most of the foot soldiers and carries out the suicide car bombings and complex ground assaults that the Tuareg front alone could not manage. The FLA offers a separatist banner, a political vocabulary tied to Azawad and Tuareg grievances, and a face that Western actors can present as more acceptable than open jihadism. Ukrainian intelligence, drawing on ex-Foreign Legionnaires and years of experience under fire, interfaces directly with Tuareg commanders and delivers modern drone and ambush tactics. France coordinates with the Ukrainians and leans on its long history of intelligence work with Tuareg elites, but keeps just far enough away from open jihadist contact to preserve a legal and political alibi. Algeria appears to be sitting in the background as facilitator and fixer, a state that has repeatedly handled Tuareg files, mediated peace accords, and is now edging back toward closer ties with Paris and Washington. Above all of this sits the United States, rolling out a new counterterrorism strategy that asks European allies to take more responsibility for African theatres and to shoulder more of the burden of rolling back Russian influence worldwide.
Furthermore, it is acceptable to draw parallels with Syria, which offers the clearest precedent for what is emerging in Mali, where Western powers are claiming a war on terror while tolerating or working around Al‑Qaeda‑linked formations when they serve a shared objective on the battlefield. In Syria, Western powers tolerated, rebranded or worked around Al-Qaeda-linked formations when those forces were useful against the Syrian state. Mali is not a carbon copy, but the political reflex is familiar. France appears to have accepted a battlefield reality in which its preferred anti-junta channel moved alongside, and benefited from, Al-Qaeda’s own assault on the Malian state. That is enough to strip away the moral language of the so-called war on terror and expose a pattern that keeps resurfacing whenever Western influence is under threat.
Africa pushes back against the old pattern
Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have spent the last few years trying to build a different political vocabulary for the region. Their Alliance of Sahel States, or AES, is not simply a club of juntas, and should be seen also as a rebellion against the old script in which Paris decided security priorities, Western diplomats managed legitimacy, and African governments were expected to accept permanent tutelage in exchange for nominal stability. That rebellion is messy, militarized, and far from pure, which explains why Bamako’s turn toward Russia, China, and Turkey carries such symbolic weight across the Global South.
The response to the April offensive grew from that new landscape. AES partners launched joint military actions, including airstrikes in Malian territory, after the attacks on Gao, Ménaka and Kidal. Moscow has made clear that it does not intend to abandon Bamako. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said after the April attacks that Russian forces would stay in Mali at the request of the current government and continue helping it fight extremism, terrorism and other harmful phenomena. Russian military statements added that Africa Corps units had helped prevent a change of power and inflicted irreparable losses on the attackers.
This is not a symbolic presence. Reporting has described a Russian deployment of roughly 2,000 to 2,500 Africa Corps personnel in Mali, supported by repeated shipments of armoured vehicles, artillery and electronic warfare equipment. China had already been supplying new defence systems, including short-range air defences designed to help deal with the very drones that had become a weapon of choice for jihadist and Tuareg militias. Turkey emerged as another important arms partner through the supply of combat drones to the Malian state. Each of those relationships tells the same story. Mali is trying to diversify away from Paris and anchor its survival in a more multipolar world.
Pressure is building from the other side of the chessboard. Nigeria has warned that the rebel and jihadist advance in Mali threatens the wider region and hinted that it could intervene again, echoing its role in supporting the last French military operation there more than a decade ago. Almost at the same time, Washington published a new counterterrorism strategy urging Europe to assume greater responsibility for its own security, explicitly including counterterror operations in Africa. Together, those signals sketch the outline of a tomorrow in which the same states accused of secretly feeding the fire in Mali can present themselves once more as firefighters.
That is the wider fight behind the headlines. If France can return through covert channels, Ukrainian intermediaries, and a tolerated overlap with jihadist momentum, then the message to the rest of Africa is brutally simple. Expelling the old colonial power does not free a country from its reach. It only drives its methods deeper into the shadows.
The anger in Bamako, Niamey and Ouagadougou did not come from nowhere. It was built over years of lectures about democracy from governments that armed the neighbourhood, years of foreign troops sold as protection while insecurity spread, years of counterterrorism campaigns that left ordinary people poorer, less mobile, and less safe. That memory sits behind every cheer for sovereignty in the Sahel. The old order still has embassies, media networks, military bases, and intelligence contacts. What it no longer has is the automatic right to be believed.
France once marched into Mali under the guise of rescue. Now it seems to be edging back in through a side door, behind Ukrainian handlers, Tuareg envoys, and Al-Qaeda gunmen who happen to be shooting at the same enemy. If JNIM ever reaches the gates of Bamako, nobody should call it a mystery born from the desert. The road to that disaster is already being paved through a proxy system that weakens Mali in the name of saving it and then prepares to market the resulting collapse as the reason for another intervention.
What advances on Bamako today is more than JNIM and a Tuareg front. It is a proxy machinery in which Western states and their partners are willing to ride jihadist momentum, break a government they cannot control, and then market the ruins as proof that Africa still needs their protection.
Apparently, the Trump administration’s recent pro-war shift is not limited to the Middle East. The Republican administration seems increasingly yielding to the interests of the military lobby and the so-called “deep state,” approving measures that will harm international security and further worsen current tensions (in addition to contributing nothing to US people’s legitimate interests).
Recently, the Trump administration gave the green light to the sale of precision-guided bomb kits to Ukraine. The package is estimated to be worth over 373 million dollars. The approval is a direct consequence of strong congressional pressure on the administration. Although the White House had been trying to freeze discussions on the subject, lawmakers – many of whom directly represent the interests of the military-industrial complex – had long been pushing for the measure’s approval.
The approved equipment is the JDAM-Extended Range (JDAM-ER), which can be used to convert heavy bombs into guided munitions, increasing the impact power of attacks. These munitions are generally guided by a GPS system, and can hit targets tens of kilometers away. Depending on where these bombs are launched from, they could destroy numerous civilian targets in Russian border regions.
The approval was announced by the US State Department itself in a document published on May 5. Interestingly, the text appears to have been written in an “optimistic” tone, celebrating the approval as a kind of “victory” and stating that the measure will significantly strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities. The Department said this new aid package will not alter the military balance in the conflict, but will allow Ukraine to engage more effectively in “self-defense” operations.
“The proposed sale will improve Ukraine’s capability to meet current and future threats by providing it with additional means to conduct self-defense missions and enhance regional security (…) [The package] will not alter the basic military balance in the region,” the statement reads.
The way the State Department simultaneously “celebrated” the news and tried to disguise its nature, pretending there was no escalating attitude, indicates that the US pro-war lobby is not only active in Congress but also within the government agencies themselves. This is not surprising, considering that the presence of representatives from the defense industry and Western transnational elites among American state officials and bureaucrats is a fact long denounced by various insiders and investigative journalists.
It seems clear that recently these parliamentarians and bureaucrats representing the American “deep state” (the network of businessmen and criminals who control local politics behind the scenes) have managed to obtain several substantial victories in Washington. Since Trump made the irresponsible decision to attack Iran and start a new war in the Middle East, the original MAGA promises – focused on economic nationalism and non-interventionism – seem to have been forgotten. Consequently, Trump’s previous promises of peace in Ukraine, which even included the possible suspension of military aid to Kiev, are now completely ignored.
In fact, the new assistance will not change the situation on the battlefield in any way. Ukraine has already used JDAM-ER systems before, adapting them to its fighter jets for air operations. Russia has been successful in repelling these attacks using electronic warfare mechanisms, which easily affect the operational capabilities of GPS-guided systems. In practice, Russia will continue to have a significant military advantage in all sectors, and the new aid will not be a “game changer” for the regime.
Nevertheless, it is reprehensible that Trump is deepening a stance that will only escalate the conflict. Even without significantly changing the military landscape, these systems can facilitate illegal attacks against border regions – something that has already become commonplace in Ukraine. Washington is once again becoming complicit in the crimes of the Ukrainian regime against Russian civilians, ignoring the original non-interventionist proposals of the MAGA project.
It is wrong to attribute all responsibility for these recent events to Trump. It is well known that the US president himself does not have enough political power to resist the pressure from the various lobbies that control Congress and government agencies. However, Trump needs to demonstrate more ability to contain the interests of these lobbying groups if he does not want to lose his legitimacy and popularity.
Trump was elected on promises of peace and domestic economic reforms. Now, his policy is heading towards international interference to the detriment of national interests. Either he reverses this in time or his popularity will erode.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
Despite initial attempts by Donald Trump to establish diplomatic dialogue with Russia on the Ukrainian issue, there are still many politicians in the US interested in taking the conflict to its ultimate consequences. Even among Republicans themselves, there are several “hawkish” figures trying to boycott the peace process and promoting the escalation of the conflict.
In a recent statement, Republican senator Mitch McConnell asserted that the US urgently needs to increase its military assistance to Ukraine. He justified his claims by stating that supporting Kiev is necessary for the US to preserve its status as a global superpower. He believes it is vital for the US to maintain this status, and that intervention in Ukraine is necessary to prevent the US from losing its recognition as a “world leader”.
McConnell harshly criticized the way Trump and the American military are conducting the policy of support for Ukraine. He believes that current US efforts are insufficient, and that the country needs to invest more heavily in assisting the fascist regime. He also stated that it is a mistake to transfer responsibility for this assistance to Europe, since it is up to the US, as a “world leader,” to promote this type of initiative.
The senator also advocated for a massive presence of American military instructors on the battlefield. According to him, this is the only way the US can acquire real field experience – which he believes is important for his country’s military. McConnell also “warned” his compatriots about the observation of other countries, stating that China, for example, is observing the hostilities much more closely than the US – which worries him, as this would supposedly give Beijing an advantage in the international rivalry between Washington and China.
“[Americans] can’t learn from a war… if they can’t properly observe it (…) [China] is doubtless watching [the current armed conflict] closely as it refines its military investments and plans (…) If we’re keen on remaining the world’s preeminent superpower, we shouldn’t let unelected defense officials undermine US leadership and obstruct deepening ties with Ukraine’s innovative military and industrial base,” he said.
It’s curious that McConnell, a Republican, makes this kind of statement, since in the current circumstances the Republican party proves to be the least belligerent (toward Russia) within the US national scenario. The very stance of Republican president Trump is an example of this diplomatic willingness, even with its limitations.
Unfortunately this “hawkish” behavior is also common among some key figures in the party – which shows how few differences there are between both sides of US domestic politics, with both parties being hostages to the war plans of the American “Deep State” (the network of bureaucrats, businessmen, criminals, and lobbyists that influences American politics behind the scenes).
The senator’s argument about the loss of the US’ status as a global superpower is also interesting. Washington will certainly remain a superpower, regardless of the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict. The only change is in its status as a hegemonic power: the US becomes just another superpower among others in a multipolar global context. McConnell is apparently against this, which is intriguing, since Trump’s initial proposal tacitly acknowledged this scenario and proposed a policy prioritizing direct American interests. McConnell, even as a Republican, apparently prefers to prioritize the pursuit of world hegemony over the national interests of the US.
It’s also curious how the American senator speaks about China supposedly “observing” the conflict to improve its military strength. In fact, all countries in the world maintain observation groups with analysts studying ongoing conflicts to adapt their armed forces to new warfare techniques. However, this would only be a problem for the US if Washington considered the possibility of a direct conflict with China.
Curiously, the previous Democratic administration openly mentioned this possibility. Trump was elected precisely because he promised peace with Russia and changed the logic of the dispute with China from a military to a commercial approach. Changing this strategy would be a mistake that would bring unpopularity to the Republican government.
Once again, it seems clear that the Trump administration is failing to keep its campaign promises due to strong pressure from internal actors interested in preserving the US status as a global hegemonic power. Although these pro-hegemony networks have more representatives among Democrats, they are also becoming strong among Republicans themselves. Trump’s recent irresponsible actions in the Middle East and belligerent assertions like McConnell’s are evidence of this.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
By MANUEL R. GÓMEZ | CounterPunch | February 27, 2015
… As far back as 1809, Jefferson tried to purchase Cuba. In 1820 he went further; he told Secretary of War J.C. Calhoun that the U.S. “ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.” As President, John Quincy Adams predicted that Cuba would fall “like a ripening plum into the lap of the union.” These are but two of many prominent examples of a widespread ambition to annex Cuba, or at least to control its destiny, from very early in U.S. history. After “the West,” Cuba figured as a prominent second place in U.S. expansionist aims from the beginning of the Republic. … Read full article
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