OUAGADOUGOU, March 11 (Reuters) – France will continue to provide military air support to Malian troops battling the Islamist insurgency in the Sahel but only where Wagner’s Russian fighters are absent, General Laurent Michon said on Friday. one month after the announcement of the withdrawal of Operation Barkhane forces.
The soldier, who commands Operation Barkhane, told a press conference in Burkina Faso that France would continue to provide air support in areas free of “Russian mercenaries”.
“We will continue to help by air by training people on the ground,” he said, adding that similar support would be offered to soldiers from Burkina Faso and Niger, two countries bordering Mali.
In an interview with RFI, General Laurent Michon stressed that it was up to the local population to fear an expansion of the forces of the Wagner group.
“It’s not so much, neither me nor the French who fear Wagner. We don’t want anything to do with them (..) We know what they are capable of, the way they fight like mercenaries, I don’t gives you no details on the abuses etc. I think that it is especially the populations who can fear the extension of Wagner”, he said.
In a joint statement issued on February 17, France and its partners involved in the fight against jihadist groups in the Sahel decided to withdraw their military forces from Mali, now finding it impossible to cooperate with the Malian junta.
Tensions with the Malian transitional government emerged after the junta’s decision to postpone until 2025 the elections which were to be held at the end of February and the merger with the Russian private military company Wagner.
The European Union imposed sanctions on Wagner, accusing him of clandestine operations on behalf of the Kremlin.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, refutes any link between this company and the Russian State but judges that private paramilitary groups can act throughout the world as long as they respect Russian law.
France estimated in January that between 300 and 400 Russian mercenaries were operating in Mali, rejecting claims by the ruling military junta that only Russian military instructors are there. (Report Thiam Ndiaga; with Tiemoko Diallo in Bamako; written by Sofia Christensen, French version Laetitia Volga, edited by)