Day: September 21, 2026

How long can Bamako keep paying for Russian firepower while its own citizens wait for electricity, medicine and classrooms? That is the question now weighing on Mali’s transition government, and the arithmetic behind it is difficult to defend. Once cash transfers, equipment purchases and mining concessions are added together, the cumulative bill for Russian paramilitary forces — the Wagner Group and its successor Africa Corps, now placed under the direct supervision of the Kremlin’s defence ministry — has climbed past 514 billion FCFA, or roughly 850 million dollars. Against a…

At Molodo, along a dust-choked track between Diabali and Niono, a question Bamako has dodged for four years was settled in a matter of minutes. On 20 September 2026, a joint patrol of Malian armed forces (FAMa) and Russian Africa Corps paramilitaries collapsed under fire from an ambush laid by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM, an Al-Qaeda affiliate). The ambush unfolded in the Ségou region, an area the central government presents as firmly under its control. The men sent from Moscow reverted to familiar reflexes:…

The result is not in doubt: United Russia, the party of Vladimir Putin, has taken 355 of the 450 seats in the Douma. The question worth asking is a different one — what exactly did that landslide measure, in a country where voters who oppose the war in Ukraine were never handed a genuine anti-war option to support? The figures behind United Russia’s two-thirds majority Preliminary results from Russia’s parliamentary elections hand a decisive win to United Russia, the ruling party tied to President Vladimir Putin. According to figures released…

The question hanging over this war is no longer whether Ukraine can reach deep inside Russia — it plainly can. It is whether striking Moscow’s oil infrastructure will push the Kremlin to rethink its strategy, or whether it will simply feed an escalation spiral that neither side can control. That is the real dilemma exposed by the overnight operation against the Moscow region. What unfolded over the Moscow region During the night of 19 to 20 September, the Moscow region absorbed one of the heaviest waves of Ukrainian drones and…

Benin’s health regulator has a new board, a fresh mandate and a promise that sounds familiar: make the rules count. The real question hanging over this second term of the Health Sector Regulation Authority (ARS) is whether it will be remembered for oversight that genuinely changes practice on the ground — or for another set of ambitions that stay on paper while patients carry the risk. A ceremony at the Marina palace, and a mandate now under scrutiny The new college of the ARS was formally installed on Friday 18…