Mali Cuts Ukraine Ties Over Alleged Aiding of Rebel Attack

Mali’s military leadership severed diplomatic ties with Ukraine over its alleged backing of a Malian Tuareg rebel group that carried out an attack in which scores of government troops and Russian-backed mercenaries died.

Mali took the action after a Ukrainian military intelligence agency spokesman said his country had assisted the rebels, without providing any details. Those comments showed “Ukraine’s involvement in a cowardly, treacherous and barbaric attack by armed terrorist groups resulting in the death of Malian soldiers,” government spokesman Abdoulaye Maiga said late Sunday.

The interview with the intelligence official went viral after it was shared in a post on the Ukrainian Embassy’s Facebook page, including a comment by its ambassador to Senegal “who openly and unequivocally displayed his country’s support for international terrorism,” Maiga said. The support “violates Mali’s sovereignty, going beyond the scope of foreign interference, amounting to support for international terrorism.”

The post has since been deleted and couldn’t be independently verified. The embassy declined to comment when reached by phone on Monday. A spokesman for the rebels in Mali didn’t respond to a text message seeking comment.

Senegal’s foreign minister on Friday summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Yurii Pyvovarov over a video it said the embassy had posted on its Facebook page in which Pyvovarov “provided unequivocal and unqualified support for the terrorist attack carried out” in Mali.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Monday the decision to cut ties was “short-sighted” and “hasty,” calling in a Monday statement for a thorough investigation into the incident in northern Mali.

More than two dozen mercenaries from the Russia-backed Wagner Group and Malian soldiers were killed last month while fighting rebels in northern Mali, according to a pro-Kremlin news source. They suffered what’s likely the group’s biggest death toll since 2021 — the year Wagner deployed to the West African to reinforce ties with the military-run government that’s been fighting a decade-long Islamist insurgency in which thousands of people had died and hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced.

With assistance from Volodymyr Verbianyi.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.