Wagner Group reportedly makes $10m a month from terror in Mali as Kremlin plunders African gold — experts

Mercenaries from the Wagner Group are reportedly making $10 million per month through their involvement in the ongoing conflict in Mali as it exchanges African gold to help fund Vladimir Putin’s war machine, experts have said.
US intelligence experts believe the Russian-backed private military company, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin until his violent death in August, is profiting from the proxy war, which has seen hundreds of civilians killed and wounded. According to Express.co.uk, Wagner mercenaries have maimed and murdered to feed Vladimir Putin’s war machine, bringing chaos and sparking horrific bloodshed in Mali and other countries in Africa. The military junta in Bamako which seized power in a coup invited Wagner in to smash Islamic State terrorists in 2021 and since then they have propped up the military regime. Mali and Russia claim that the fighters are not mercenaries but trainers assisting local troops in combating an insurgency.
However, Washington holds a different view when it has accused the Russian-backed mercenary group of helping to engineer the exit of United Nations peacekeeping troops from the West African state. This view is supported by US intelligence experts who assert that Moscow has been accused of earning huge profits on the back of Wagner’s turning Mali into a battleground, which has seen hundreds of civilians killed and wounded. Professor Salvador Sánchez Tapi, an expert in conflict analysis at the University of Navarra, says that Wagner offers a broad portfolio of violence, atrocities and human rights violations, adding that in Mali anything related to buttressing the junta takes precedence over improving the overall security situation in the country.