Over the past decade, Russia managed to entrench itself in the defense and foreign policy establishments of multiple states across the Middle East and Africa. From Syria to Libya, and from Sudan to the Sahel, the Kremlin has pursued an opportunistic state-capture strategy—offering military and political support to embattled strongmen in exchange for influence over their security policies and corrupt business deals involving natural resources and state assets.
The Wagner Group was once at the heart of this effort, but the Kremlin has always been the driving force. And since Wagner’s 2023 mutiny and its subsequent restructuring as the Africa Corps under the Russian Ministry of Defense, Moscow has tightened its grip on day-to-day operations.
Russia’s gambit has yielded some short-term strategic gains, enabling the Kremlin to expand its geopolitical reach while facilitating sanction-evasion schemes and lucrative transactions. However, a country-by-country review reveals that Russia’s interventions have consistently exacerbated state fragility and state failure, ultimately limiting the extent of the Kremlin’s own influence.
Syria and the Limits of Russian Power
Syria offers a stark illustration of the limits of Russian power. For years, Russia’s military intervention in the country’s civil war appeared to have secured Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Between 2015 and 2020, in particular, Russia’s brutal air bombardments, combined with the deployment of military advisors and trainers, enabled Assad to reclaim control over two-thirds of Syria. This fueled a narrative of Russia as a reliable counterinsurgency partner—one capable of shielding its allies from both armed rebels and Western pressure.
As a result, a number of embattled strongmen and would-be autocrats across Africa began courting the Kremlin for support—among them Khalifa Haftar in Libya, Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, and Faustin-Archange Touadéra in the Central African Republic. Then, between 2020 and 2023, Russia capitalized on a wave of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, forging close ties with the new ruling juntas and encouraging them to expel US and French military forces.
But Moscow’s promise to deliver security in the Sahel is proving hollow. The war in Ukraine continues to drain Russian resources, and Wagner’s restructuring into the Africa Corps remains a work in progress beset with challenges. Meanwhile, the collapse of Assad’s regime has shattered Moscow’s image as a dependable counterinsurgency partner, sending a clear and troubling signal to African leaders who rely on Russia for security: Moscow’s commitments are far from assured.
Trouble in the Sahel
Security in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger has deteriorated dramatically since the ruling juntas severed their security partnerships with France and the United States to pursue ties with Russia. The Sahel is now the global epicenter of terrorist violence, according to the United Nations. Within Mali’s military, frustration with Wagner is mounting—particularly after the July 24 Tinzaouaten debacle, in which Tuareg separatists ambushed a military convoy, killing over forty Malian soldiers and eighty Wagner fighters. Less than two months later, in September, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) launched a major assault on Bamako, killing more than seventy and injuring hundreds. These incidents exposed Moscow’s failure to fill the security vacuum left by the withdrawal of Western forces and UN peacekeepers.
To demonstrate its commitment to Mali, the Kremlin has since delivered around one hundred armored vehicles to Bamako, in a show of force likely aimed at bolstering Russia’s image and countering perceptions that its forces are on the back foot. However, the delivery of tanks and other heavy vehicles, which in the context of Mali may be better suited for dominating urban environments than for desert warfare against lightly armed rebels, suggests a shift in focus from offensive counterinsurgency operations to securing the regime in Bamako.
In Burkina Faso and Niger, Russia’s Africa Corps has so far deployed only small advisory teams, numbering a few hundred personnel at most, despite mounting security challenges. In Burkina Faso, over 60 percent the country is now outside government control, with JNIM and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) encircling the capital, Ouagadougou. JNIM jihadists may have killed as many as six hundred people in a single attack in August. JNIM’s strong presence in Burkina Faso’s eastern borderlands has also enabled further expansion into Benin and Togo, severely threatening the stability of the two coastal states.
In Niger, JNIM recently launched an attack on the outskirts of the capital Niamey, while the ISSP has significantly increased the frequency and severity of its assaults around the district capital of Tera. The Nigerien junta has resorted to media censorship to suppress reports on mounting security challenges and military casualties. In December, the BCC was suspended for three months for reporting that insurgents had killed more than ninety Nigerien soldiers and more than forty civilians in two villages near the border with Burkina Faso.
The rapid worsening of security in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger showcases how the war in Ukraine may be limiting Russia’s ability to effectively support counterinsurgency operations in Africa. Indeed, Russia’s role in the Sahel coup belt appears to be little more than that of a temporary guarantor of military rule. As Christopher Faulkner, Marcel Plichta, and Rafael Parens noted in a recent article, Russia may have reached the peak of its influence in the region and could now be seeking to scale down its involvement. But the security vacuum in the Sahel does not bode well for the broader region, where several states are at risk of conflict spillover.
How Russian Influence Drives State Failure
The devastating repercussions of Russia’s foreign influence operations in fragile states are also evident in Sudan. The Kremlin had once backed the dictator Omar al-Bashir, in exchange for corrupt business deals involving Sudanese gold and the promise of a naval base on the Red Sea. After al-Bashir’s downfall in 2019, Moscow encouraged both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to resist a democratic transition, paving the way for the 2021 coup. Following the coup, the RSF exploited gold smuggling and Wagner-linked business deals to augment its arsenal and recruit more fighters, leading to a destructive power struggle between the RSF and the SAF over the control of Sudan’s resources.
When full-scale conflict erupted in April 2023, the Wagner Group continued supplying the RSF with surface-to-air missiles and other weapons via Libya, while ramping up illicit gold exports. To make matters worse, Moscow is supplying arms to both the RSF and the SAF in an effort to hedge its bets, exacerbating a conflict that has become the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis.
Sudan’s deepening fragmentation, however, poses challenges to Russia’s broader geopolitical objectives in the region. The war has stalled long-discussed plans for the construction of a Russian naval base on the Red Sea and disrupted overland routes linking Russia’s military and economic interests in the region, thus reducing the country’s strategic value to the Kremlin.
Libya may appear more stable than Sudan, but Russian influence has contributed to bringing about a deeply dysfunctional and corrupt status quo. Moscow’s military foothold in Libya depends largely on its relationship with the eighty-one-year-old Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control eastern Libya. Following Assad’s loss of power in Syria, Haftar-controlled Libya has become even more critical to the Kremlin: Russian cargo planes have shuttled between Syria and Libya’s al-Khadim airfield, reportedly transporting S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, military vehicles, and ammunition in violation of the UN arms embargo on Libya. Russia has even reactivated a base along the border between Chad and Sudan, and has continued to use Libya to ship arms to Mali.
However, Haftar has yet to agree to a much-discussed Russian naval base in Tobruk or Benghazi. While remaining close to the Kremlin, Haftar has cultivated ties with multiple foreign actors, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Italy, and has quietly engaged with the United States. Some of his sons have increasingly positioned themselves as pragmatic power brokers, leveraging ties with Turkey and European actors to diversify Libya’s alliances. Russia’s influence in Libya remains significant—but vulnerable, and the corruption Russia has fostered all but ensures that the country will remain mired in divisions and power struggles.
The Central African Republic remains one of Russia’s strongest footholds in Africa. President Touadéra continues to rely on Wagner forces for personal security, while Russian-linked business networks maintain a grip on the country’s gold, diamonds, logging sites, and even beer and liquor industries.
But cracks are beginning to show. Rwanda has steadily expanded its influence, leveraging its UN peacekeeping presence to deepen ties with the Central African Republic’s leadership and the business sector. Meanwhile, a US private security firm, Bancroft Global Development, has arrived at Touadéra’s request, signaling a push to diversify partnerships. The country’s military even recently conducted a military exchange with US forces. Moscow remains dominant there, but its sway may be weakening.
The Way Forward
The Kremlin remains eager to project strength and success in Africa, relying on disinformation and media manipulation. But on the ground, its strategy is faltering—strained by the war in Ukraine, relentless insurgencies across multiple countries, and Wagner’s restructuring into the Africa Corps, which has weakened both its effectiveness and profitability.
For US policymakers, it may be tempting to let Russia overextend and exhaust itself. That would be a mistake. Moscow’s interventions are not just failing—they are further destabilizing fragile conflict-torn states, creating the conditions for protracted insurgencies and other long-term security threats. Russia’s support for Assad, for example, not only failed to defeat rebel groups but also strengthened Iran and its regional proxies, contributing to the spillover of the war in Gaza into Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, and ultimately setting the stage for jihadi rebels to seize Damascus. In Libya, Russia’s military presence continues to threaten NATO’s southern flank and to sustain the Kremlin’s destabilizing influence from Sudan to Mali. The Sahel is now a powder keg of Salafi jihadi insurgent activity, and the violence is spilling over into coastal West Africa.
While Russia’s African gambit is increasingly unlikely to pay off in the long term, its ability to foment instability and challenge US interests remains a critical concern. If left unchecked, the chaos Russia is sowing in Africa will likely outlast its presence.
To contain Russian influence, the United States must shore up reasonably good governments in Africa and demonstrate that Washington offers a better pathway to security and development than the Kremlin. Additionally, the US Treasury should continue sanctioning individuals involved in corrupt business transactions that fuel conflict and undermine international peace and security. If Washington fails to act decisively, it won’t just cede ground to Moscow—it will enable autocrats and warlords to continue fueling conflict and state failure, in Africa and beyond.
Federico Manfredi Firmian is a lecturer in political science at Sciences Po Paris, an associate research fellow at the Institute for International Political Studies, and a nonresident research fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. His latest book is War in Syria and the Middle East: A Political and Economic History (University of Texas Press, 2025).
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: mil.ru, via Wikimedia Commons
