The Malian government announced on Thursday that militant groups with links to Al-Qaeda carrying out terror attacks in the country were trained and armed by Ukrainian specialists.
Fousseynou Ouattara, Vice President of the Defense Commission of Mali's Transitional Council, said authorities identified militants who received training in Ukraine to carry out operations using kamikaze drones produced by Kiev. "These young people are known, we have now added them to our lists, and we have their names," Ouattara said.
Illustrative file imageThe militants fighting the Malian government belong to a Tuareg-led separatist group, the Azawad Liberation Front (ALF), and Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen (JNIM), an extremist group linked to Al-Qaeda.
He added that the militant groups are receiving fighters from Algeria, Mauritania, and Libya, as well as training from members of the French Foreign Legion and Ukrainian instructors.
France is allegedly supporting the ALF and JNIM following the Malian government's removal of French troops in 2022. In their place, private military contractors from Russia's Wagner Group were deployed.
After a May 2021 coup in Mali, the country's military junta officially demanded that France withdraw its troops "without delay." French troops had been present in Mali for nine years, allegedly to fight the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgency.
Mali was a French colony known as French Sudan befor
