Russia pledged today at the United Nations that it would continue to provide “full support” to Mali, where around 1,000 fighters from the Wagner mercenary group are helping the country’s military junta in its fight against Islamist rebels.

The head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed last week when the plane he was on crashed, and then Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the company’s mercenaries to sign an oath of loyalty to the Russian state.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polianksi said bilateral cooperation between Russia and Mali as well as the military junta’s “dominant choice” of international partners “keep our former Western partners on their toes”. “Russia, for its part, will continue to provide Mali and its other interested African partners with full assistance on a bilateral, equal basis, with mutual respect,” he added, addressing the Security Council.

In June, the 15-member Security Council voted to end the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA) after the military junta suddenly asked its 13,000 members to leave. The US believed that this action was dictated by Wagner.

Mali is struggling to contain the Islamist rebels who have been entrenched since their insurgency in 2012. UN monitors told the Security Council this month that in less than a year, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara has doubled the size of the areas it controls in Mali.

The Mali junta, which took power after two consecutive coups (2020 and 2021), has been working with Wagner since 2021.

“As many of us feared, the transitional government’s decision to close MINUSMA has already sparked new violence on the ground,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council. “Furthermore, the withdrawal of MINUSMA limits the ability of the international community to protect civilians from Wagner’s predators, whose activities are contributing to the insecurity in the country,” he added.