Hello everyone,
Welcome to my inaugural podcast Eyes on Eurasia with Glen Howard. In this episode, I discussed the recent July 27 attack on Russia’s Wagner forces in Mali by the al-Qaeda-affiliated JNIM militant group. The attack caused an estimated 82 Russian deaths and certainly ranks as one of the worst defeats for Putin’s Afrika Korps since Wagner began operating in Africa.
No two experts are better qualified to discuss this topic than Jacob Zenn and Sergey Sukhankin. Jacob Zenn in my opinion ranks as one of the leading experts on African militant movements in the policy world. In 2020 he wrote a groundbreaking book on the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram entitled Unmasking Boko Haram: Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria. Sergey Sukhankin is equally qualified due to his extensive writings on Wagner’s overseas operations in not just Africa but other parts of the world and published a landmark study in 2020 entitled War by Other Means: Russia’s Use of Private Military Contractors at Home and Abroad.
Episode 1 : Wagner's Debacle in Mali