In the blistering heat of Mauritania’s border camps, where the sand stretches endlessly like a sea of forgotten hopes, Malian refugees huddle in threadbare tents, their voices trembling as they recount a nightmare that defies comprehension. “White men” in military gear—masked, relentless, speaking a guttural tongue—have swept through villages like a plague, leaving behind charred homes, severed heads, and bodies carved open for organs. This is the harrowing testimony emerging from the Sahel’s deadliest front, where Russia’s rebranded Wagner successors, the Africa Corps, stand accused of war crimes that echo the brutality of their predecessors, but with the Kremlin’s official stamp.
The Associated Press broke the story on December 7, 2025, after gaining rare access to these remote refugee outposts. Over 30 survivors, many from the nomadic Fulani and Tuareg communities, described a scorched-earth campaign against al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates that has devoured innocents in its path. “It’s a scorched earth policy,” whispered one village chief, his eyes hollow from flight. “The soldiers speak to no one. Anyone they see, they shoot. No questions, no warning. People don’t even know why they are being killed.”
The atrocities paint a picture of calculated savagery. Refugees shared grainy videos of villages reduced to ash, marketplaces gutted by flames. Two women, their faces etched with grief, recounted discovering loved ones’ corpses with livers and kidneys surgically excised—echoing earlier AP reports on Wagner’s grisly trade in harvested organs, often sold on black markets or flaunted in neo-Nazi Telegram channels laced with racist taunts.
Beheadings are routine, they say: men dragged from homes, executed on suspicion of jihadist ties, their heads paraded as warnings. Rapes target the vulnerable—girls as young as 12, mothers fleeing with infants—leaving families shattered and communities too terrified to report.
Mougaloa’s story chills the air in her makeshift shelter. Three months ago, masked “white men” gunned down her 20-year-old son after Malian soldiers interrogated him about militants. “They called him ‘pes’—dog in their language,” she said, her voice cracking. In October, they returned for her daughter, Fatma, 18, who vanished into the night. “We were so scared. We are hoping she will get here at some point.” Fatma’s fate remains unknown, one of dozens abducted in sweeps that blend Malian junta forces with the Africa Corps.
In Kurmare village last month, another Fatma watched as looters stripped homes of jewelry and livestock. Her son lay shot dead in his shop; her daughter succumbed to seizures during the desperate dash to Mauritania. “They took everything—our lives, our dignity,” she told NewsFocus, clutching a faded photo of the girl who never made it.
This is no rogue operation. The Africa Corps, formed after Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fatal 2023 plane crash following his mutiny against Vladimir Putin, operates under Russia’s Defense Ministry—making Moscow directly liable under international law.
Analysts estimate 2,000 fighters, many ex-Wagner veterans, patrolling Mali’s lawless north. “Only the name was changed,” one local told the AP. “The clothes, the vehicles, the people stayed the same. The methods stayed the same, and even became worse.”
The Sahel’s jihadist inferno has claimed thousands, fueling coups in Mali (2021), Burkina Faso, and Niger. These juntas ditched Western allies like France and the UN’s MINUSMA—pulled in 2023 amid scandals—and pivoted to Russia, inviting mercenaries to battle JNIM (al-Qaeda’s arm) and ISGS.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the Corps’ presence “at the request of Malian authorities,” touting it as anti-terror aid: ground escorts, rescues, security for gold mines that fund the Kremlin’s war chest.
But on the ground, it’s terror.
Civilian deaths linked to Russians fell from 911 in 2024 to 447 this year, per the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Yet Heni Nsaibia, a conflict analyst, warns the true toll is higher: “People are more scared to report.”
UN expert Eduardo Gonzalez Cueva’s pleas for access to Mali’s junta—twice denied this year—highlight the impunity. The country quit the International Criminal Court in 2025, shielding perpetrators as the ICC probes crimes since 2012.
Social media amplifies the outrage. On X, posts from Ukrainian journalists and African activists decry the “war crimes,” with one viral thread sharing refugee videos: “Russia’s shadow empire grows darker in Africa.”
BBC reports from November echo the AP, detailing a shopkeeper’s ordeal: tortured, forced to watch beheadings, threatened with dismemberment.
“They dunked my head in water until I almost suffocated… then beheaded two men in front of me,” he recalled.
Legal voices demand action. Lindsay Freeman of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center insists: “Any war crimes… are attributable to the Russian government.”
As refugees like Moyme—whose daughter still clenches her fist in trauma—wait in limbo, the question hangs heavy: Will the world hold Putin accountable, or will the Sahel’s blood-soaked sands swallow another chapter of unchecked horror?
For these families, hope flickers faintly. “We fled for survival,” one elder said, gazing toward Mali’s hazy horizon. “But home feels like a grave.”
