On 12 September, CNN reported that around fifteen Ukrainian drone specialists are working with the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) in northern Mali. According to two Ukrainians deployed there, the group does not fight on the front line; it trains fighters and helps run operations. A Ukrainian operator told CNN that he coordinates the rebels’ operations remotely and that Ukrainians helped take Kidal earlier this year. Tuareg rebels and al-Qaeda-linked fighters attacked the town simultaneously, and Russian forces were forced to withdraw. Last week, Jeune Afrique called the story an embarrassment for Washington, which is rebuilding ties with Bamako.

What follows is a balance sheet for seven actors in the war in Mali and in the Ukrainian episode: their interests, gains and losses.

Kyiv

Interest. The line Kyrylo Budanov set out while still head of military intelligence (HUR): strike Russia wherever it is present. Some analysts see the African operation as cheap and potentially rewarding, since it stretches Russian resources.

Gains. Tactical. Ukrainian operators reportedly help the FLA locate and attack Russian convoys, and by a Ukrainian operator’s own account Kidal was taken with their help. But fifteen specialists, even with perfect logistics for equipment deliveries, cannot raise the fighters’ level of training or conceptually change the character of the fighting. Kidal was taken by the FLA and JNIM.

Losses. Strategic. In 2024, after HUR spokesman Andriy Yusov said the rebels at Tinzaouaten had received all the information they needed, Mali and Niger cut diplomatic ties with Kyiv and, together with Burkina Faso, lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council accusing Ukraine of sponsoring terrorism. Ukraine’s foreign ministry denied involvement at the time and affirmed its unconditional respect for the sovereignty of other states. Two years later, Ukrainian specialists are working with the FLA on Malian soil. Since 2023 Ukraine has opened eight new diplomatic missions in Africa, and this story undermines their work.

There is a cost at home as well. Every such specialist in the Sahel, for an uncertain result, is one specialist fewer where Ukraine’s own fate is being decided.

Finally, there is the precedent. Ukraine’s right to self-defence is not in question. But Kyiv’s policy in Mali has crossed a line drawn not only by the norms of the international community but also by the US-Ukraine partnership. It sets a dangerous precedent for international law: folding support for international terrorism into the logic of confrontation with an adversary. If one state may do this, every state may.

Moscow

Interest. To hold Mali as Africa Corps’ anchor in the Sahel and to preserve Russia’s reputation as a reliable guarantor of regimes.

Losses. Military. Tinzaouaten in 2024, Kidal in 2026. According to ACLED data cited by RFI, more than 200 Russian fighters were killed in Mali between July 2024 and August 2026. Africa Corps has managed only tactical moves, but an operational breakthrough is impossible without more forces, and the Russian contingent in Mali has seen no serious change in numbers or quality. Time is working against Moscow. Nor is there an economic foothold: the military presence never turned into investment, and a gold refinery project near Bamako has gone unfinanced for more than a year. There is a reputational account too: a UN human rights report found that Malian troops and ‘foreign military personnel’ killed more than 500 people in Moura in March 2022. Yet the situation has not changed fundamentally either. Africa Corps remains, in effect, the only external force and the only means of propping up Assimi Goïta’s regime.

Gains. Narrative, and considerable. Russian setbacks in Mali now come with a ready explanation: the Ukrainian hand. In 2024 the Russian foreign ministry promptly seized on Mali’s break with Ukraine and presented it as the result of Kyiv’s support for terrorism. Kidal will be framed the same way. Kyiv supplies the evidence itself: Yusov’s statements, the video by Ukraine’s ambassador Yurii Pyvovarov, whom Senegal’s foreign ministry summoned to explain himself, and now the operators’ interviews with CNN. Any attack on a convoy escorted by Africa Corps will be read as Kyiv’s involvement in supporting terrorists. According to RFI, on 28 September JNIM ambushed an Africa Corps convoy near Niono, in the Ségou region. Drones struck the vehicles first, and at least four Russians were killed. Nothing links the attack to the FLA or the north, yet drones in a JNIM ambush are now easy to lay at Ukraine’s door.

Bamako and the AES

Interest. Regime survival and regaining control of the north.

Losses. Territory and senior leadership. Kidal, retaken by the army with Wagner’s backing in November 2023, was lost again in April 2026. The same month, Defence Minister Sadio Camara was killed.

Gains. An external enemy. Defeats can be blamed on outside interference rather than on the limits of the regime’s own strategy. The Ukrainian episode fits neatly into a narrative Bamako has built since 2022: that the West backs terrorism in the Sahel. In August 2022 Mali wrote to the UN Security Council accusing France of supplying weapons and intelligence to jihadist groups; Paris rejected the charge. The narrative now has what it lacked: a partner of the West whose own specialists talk on the record about working with al-Qaeda’s allies. That lets Bamako offset its own failures. The same move works across the AES: in Niger, militants are routinely called ‘mercenaries’, and state television blamed France for August’s mutiny. There is a diplomatic card as well: Bamako can put the same point to Washington in every round of bargaining.

Washington

Interest. A return to the Sahel. In February 2026 the US Treasury lifted sanctions on Camara and two other Malian officials. Early in the year the head of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs visited Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey. The goals were security cooperation, the release of Kevin Rideout, an American kidnapped in 2025, and access to minerals. On 31 August a bipartisan bill, H.R. 10195, was introduced in Congress calling on the administration to set out a strategy against JNIM’s expansion.

Losses. Ukraine, which Washington backs in Europe, is working against its line in the Sahel. Every report of Ukrainians alongside JNIM strengthens Bamako’s hand in negotiations and forces the administration to choose between two partners.

Gains. None.

The FLA

The FLA is a movement for the independence of Azawad, and therefore separatist.

Interest. Control of the north and negotiating weight.

Gains. Kidal, technology, training.

Losses. Deferred but heavy. Bamako itself tore up the 2015 Algiers peace agreement in January 2024, and the FLA’s negotiating channel now runs through intermediaries: Togo, Algeria and Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. The Ukrainian connection binds the FLA to JNIM for good in the eyes of Bamako, Moscow and, more importantly, Washington. Separatists are becoming harder to tell apart from jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda, an international terrorist organisation, and no one negotiates with terrorists. For now, Bamako still agrees to prisoner exchanges and to deals such as the one under which Africa Corps left Kidal. That window is narrowing.

Algeria

Interest. A stable southern flank and its role as the main broker in northern Mali.

Losses. A more complicated position. Algeria is one of the FLA’s intermediaries: it brokered Africa Corps’ exit from Kidal. Its ties with Bamako, frozen after Algeria shot down a Malian drone near the border in 2025, were restored only in July 2026, and as recently as February Bamako was accusing Algiers of backing ‘terrorist’ groups. Ukrainian involvement in the fighting next to Algeria’s border makes the broker an easy target: every accusation aimed at the FLA now also lands on those who talk to it.

Gains. A freer hand. The new drone war on its doorstep gives Algeria, whose main arms supplier remains Russia, a strong argument for buying Russian attack drones such as the Geran, framed as a response to a new threat rather than a gesture towards Moscow. No such purchase has been confirmed.

JNIM

Interest. To push the state out and govern territory.

Gains. The largest of all, and free of charge. The FLA and JNIM are formally separate organisations, but on 25 April they officially coordinated operations for the first time and stormed Kidal together, and the 82 Malian soldiers released in August had been held by both groups. Their synchronisation rests on ideological consensus as well as staff coordination: sharia and the fight against Bamako. According to France’s Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, after its agreement with JNIM the largely secular FLA appears to have accepted certain forms of sharia applied through customary law. At this level of cooperation, supporting the FLA means supporting JNIM at one remove. JNIM gets the technical boost without a single contact with Kyiv.

JNIM’s second gain is political. The powers that ought to be fighting it together are busy settling scores with one another.

Losses. From this story, none. Its only risk is Washington’s attention, which H.R. 10195 directs squarely at JNIM.

The balance

Kyiv: a tactical plus, a strategic minus. Moscow: a military minus, a narrative plus, its indispensability intact. Bamako: a territorial minus, a diplomatic plus. Washington: a net loss. The FLA: a plus today, a minus tomorrow. Algeria: a diplomatic minus, a freer hand in arms procurement. JNIM: a plus at no cost.

The campaign costs Kyiv more than it costs Moscow. Kyiv believes it is hitting Moscow, while in practice it is training the allies of Islamist terrorists. The winner is the player nobody invites to the table.