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Central African Republic: Another defeat for the Africa Corps

By Mustapha Bature Sallama
22 Jul 2026

Two years after it was created to inherit Wagner's footprint in Africa, the Kremlin's Africa Corps can no longer export itself with confidence. From Bangui to Bamako to Lomé, the pattern is the same: costly deployments, disputed battlefield results, and a search for hosts desperate enough to overlook both.

Bangui says no
The Central African Republic was Wagner's last stronghold on the continent, dating back to 2018. Talks to convert that presence into an Africa Corps deployment began in 2023 and were revived in March last year when President Faustin-Archange Touadéra travelled to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, alongside GRU chief Admiral Kostyukov and General Averyanov, who runs Africa Corps' expansion. By the end of May, Russia's ambassador in Bangui was reportedly confirming that the project had collapsed.

Money explains the refusal. Wagner cost Bangui almost nothing because the mercenary outfit financed itself through gold and diamond concessions. Africa Corps, by contrast, would have required between four and fifteen million dollars a month, close to a third of the state's annual budget, even after Moscow sweetened the offer with helicopters, aircraft, ammunition and training. The transfer of Russian equipment already in the country remains stuck in a financial dispute Moscow and Bangui have not resolved.

Mali: the model tested in combat
Cost is only part of the story. In Mali, where Africa Corps took over from Wagner in June 2025, Bamako pays roughly ten million dollars a month, and the results have not matched the price. Since 2024, Russian-backed forces have absorbed a string of losses: an ambush near Kidal in July 2024 that killed between 20 and 80 mercenaries alongside ten Malian soldiers; a JNIM strike on Ténenkou in August 2025 that cost 35 Malian soldiers and 14 Russians; and coordinated attacks across seven towns on 25 April 2026 in which Defence Minister General Sadio Camara, the chief architect of Mali's pivot to Moscow, was killed by a car bomb at his home.

By May 2026, Russian fighters were withdrawing from Kidal, Tessalit and Aguel'hoc, with roughly 400 men evacuating Kidal under escort from the Front for the Liberation of Azawad (FLA) after negotiations. In early July, JNIM and the FLA besieged the Anéfis camp on the Gao-Kidal-Aguel'hoc corridor; a relief convoy was ambushed at Tabrichat and a Russian helicopter was shot down, and it took five days of fighting and a second convoy to reopen the road.

On 18 July, a Malian army convoy leaving Anéfis for Gao was ambushed near Tabankort by a joint JNIM-FLA force. Multiple wire reports and a security source in Gao described the losses as heavy, with dozens of soldiers killed or captured and armored vehicles destroyed or seized; the convoy reportedly included Africa Corps personnel travelling alongside Malian troops. It followed clashes around Anéfis that had already left about 30 Malian soldiers dead and 60 wounded by mid-July, according to Mali's army general staff.

ACLED data cited in Africa Corps' reporting record shows battles involving Russian fighters in Mali falling from 537 in 2024 to 402 in 2025, and to roughly twenty a month by early 2026, a retreat from direct engagement that has not translated into less insecurity or fewer abuses against civilians. Africa Corps' public messaging has stayed defiant regardless, describing the Anéfis fighting as an "epic battle" with hundreds of terrorists neutralized, a gap between narrative and battlefield reality that has become the outfit's most consistent export. Each retreat also hands the opposing coalition more equipment: FLA-JNIM fighters used at least one captured Russian BTR-80 armoured vehicle during the Anéfis assault.

A cargo ship looking for a harbour
The setbacks are not only military. Since January 2025, most Russian shipments bound for Mali have moved through the port of Conakry, a single corridor exposed to the political will of one government to keep receiving sanctioned cargo. The vessel Mikhail Britnev left Baltiysk on 12 June 2026 under Baltic Fleet escort, was long declared bound for Dakar, and instead docked quietly in Lomé on the night of 9 July, bypassing Conakry entirely.

Togo is now Moscow's only new foothold on the Gulf of Guinea, hosting more than 300 Africa Corps personnel since January 2026 under a 2025 military cooperation agreement, reinforced by President Faure Gnassingbé's November 2025 visit to the Kremlin and a March 2026 visit to Lomé by Russia's defence minister. That access reflects Togo's political vulnerabilities rather than Africa Corps' record: domestic unrest over a 2024 constitutional reform, repressed protests in June 2025, and prosecutions of opposition figures, alongside an ECOWAS Court of Justice ruling on 25 June 2026 that labeled the reform an unconstitutional change of government. Several Togolese parties are now demanding answers on the presence of foreign forces on national soil.

Nigeria weighs the offer and holds back

Facing setbacks in Bangui and the Sahel, Moscow has turned to Nigeria. GRU commander Andrey Averyanov met Nigeria's Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, on 29 April 2025, seeking an opening starting with troop training. Abuja has listened without committing, choosing instead to deepen its Western ties: a limited American intelligence and training team was confirmed in February 2026 at Nigeria's own request, and joint Nigerian-American strikes hit ISWAP positions around Metele and Dogon Chukwu in May 2026.

A suspension of US arms sales has opened a gap Moscow hopes to exploit, but Nigeria, Africa's largest army, appears to be weighing the Malian and Central African record before it commits to anything similar, wary of a high price for uncertain protection, a loss of sovereignty that has weakened institutions elsewhere, and an economic model built on resource plunder and, in the Central African case, control of large-scale Tramadol trafficking.

A model that no longer sells
For three years, Russia's security offer rested on two claims: effectiveness and no political conditions attached. Neither has survived scrutiny. Kidal, Tessalit and Aguel'hoc abandoned, Anéfis besieged, convoys destroyed at Tabrichat and Tabankort, a defence minister assassinated, and in Bangui a partner that could not even settle ownership of its own armored vehicles this is the record African governments are now reading for themselves. An ally that abandons positions and equipment to armed groups, and multiplies civilian abuse in the process, is not merely failing to contain terrorism; it is helping it grow. The Central African refusal and the search for a Gulf of Guinea port point to the same conclusion: Africa Corps no longer sells because it no longer works.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880
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