Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (left) meets with his Malian counterpart Abdoulaye Diop in Bamako, Mali, February 7, 2023. RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY VIA AFP
The accusation came from Washington: “Wagner [le groupe de mercenariat russe] “I’ve been trying to buy military equipment from foreign suppliers and ship those weapons through Mali,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday, May 22, during a news conference. A war arsenal that, according to the US government, is still intended “to be deployed in Ukraine” “to support Russia’s war over Mali.”
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A US intelligence document, part of a leak of classified information published on online gamers’ social network Discord, sheds more light on the role Bamako plays in Russian society. Consulted by Le Monde, he reiterated that the President of the Malian Transition, Colonel Assimi Goïta, “confirmed that Mali could acquire arms from Turkey on behalf of Wagner”. The same undated document states that Russian mercenaries, for their part, “met with Turkish contacts in early February to buy arms and equipment from Turkey.”
For his part, during his press conference, Matthew Miller emphasized that Wagner’s men, who have been in Mali since December 2021, “are prepared to use false documents for these transactions”, without mentioning the alleged involvement from Istanbul. “There’s not even anything to comment on,” he responded Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Wednesday, May 24. “The US State Department should have dealt with substantive arms matters rather than such ‘waste of information’… It should have answered the question of how aware the United States is of the world’s arms proliferation” alleged aid to the Kiev regime , because these guns are immediately sold on the black market,” she countered.
Classic approach
“It’s a forged signature game,” explains a Western diplomat stationed in Bamako. Wagner is looking for states that, like Mali, are weak enough to conclude sham arms deals with another third country for a commission. The state signs and pretends that the weapons are intended for them, when in fact they are being sent to Ukraine. »
According to Matt Schroeder, senior researcher at the Swiss NGO Small Arms Survey, using third countries to circumvent international regulations governing the trade in firearms or embargoes imposed on certain states is a classic modus operandi often used by arms dealers: “Dealers are often .” Attempt to disguise the true destination of a shipment of weapons, for example, by claiming that it is going to a legitimate end user, such as a state’s armed forces. In some cases, the human trafficker works with corrupt officials from third countries. In other cases nobody in the third country knows about the transfer. »
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