An elite team of Ukrainian drone operators is tracking Russian forces from remote desert bases in Africa, as Kyiv expands its proxy campaign against Vladimir Putin’s overseas military network while building new partnerships aimed at countering Moscow.
Since 2020, Russia has sent roughly 5,000 troops to Mali, Sudan and Libya to support coup-installed military regimes and regional warlords. Putin has sought to capitalize on the withdrawal of Western forces, reestablish Russia as a major power in Africa and secure access to valuable mining operations.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has joined forces with local rebel groups battling those same Russian deployments.
“I coordinate their operations remotely,” one Ukrainian drone operator in Mali told CNN, describing his work with a local separatist organization.
“The drone’s signal reaches me over the internet, and I immediately use the radio to tell them what to do and where to fly.”
Ukrainian forces spent years refining drone warfare while fighting Russia at home after Putin launched his full-scale invasion in 2022. Kyiv’s African campaign is part of a broader strategy to put pressure on Moscow by targeting its military presence beyond Ukraine.
“It puts pressure on them. This whole story has both psychological and real results,” the operator said of the impact on Moscow.
Fifteen Ukrainian drone operators are working alongside the Azawad Liberation Front in Mali, where they are helping resist more than 2,000 Russian troops deployed to support the military junta led by Gen. Assimi Goïta. Goïta seized power in two coups, in 2020 and 2021, and has ruled the country without holding elections.
“They go out on missions and then return to me, and we review every detail of what they did. I don’t go to the front lines myself — that was a direct order from my superiors,” the operator said.
Ukraine has also trained troops from Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso. Those soldiers traveled to Mali to study alongside the Ukrainian personnel operating there.
“Culture and religion are different, but when you are being attacked by the same idiots, ideological differences fade into the background,” a source in Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence told the outlet.
The Ukrainian operation in Africa mirrors Kyiv’s efforts in the Middle East, where its drone expertise has helped US allies counter Iran’s powerful Shahed drone arsenal.
“We are turning our experience in the field of drones into a foreign policy tool,” said the defense intelligence source.
An increasingly desperate Kremlin is also using foreign recruits from a staggering 136 countries to fight its war in Ukraine, a new Amnesty International report published Thursday revealed.
“Recruitment has frequently involved deceptive, coercive and exploitative practices,” the organization said in its report, where it spoke with prisoners of war captured by Ukrainian forces.
The men have been from countries including Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Somalia and South Africa, often foreign nationals from low-income countries or migrants and refugees in Russia,
They were duped into joining Putin’s war by false promises of civilian jobs, high salaries, legal status or citizenship.
Meanwhile, the number of Russian soldiers killed on the battlefield has risen to 500,000 since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to new numbers from the British military intelligence published Friday.
Russian casualties, which also include wounded soldiers who can no longer fight, has reached 1.5 million men.
