🇷🇺🇧🇫🇲🇱🇳🇪 The Kremlin is strengthening its strategic relationship with the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

The AES helps the Kremlin supplant Western influence, pose as a great power, and create opportunities to threaten NATO's southern flank.

The three foreign ministers from the AES states traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov on April 3 and 4 as part of the first sessions of “AES-Russia consultations.”

The AES is a strategic project for Russia that advances its goals to supplant Western influence in Africa and assert itself as a revitalized great power.

The AES functions as a pro-Russian economic, military, and political bloc.

The AES juntas have helped Russia supplant Western influence by replacing thousands of Western & UN troops in the Sahel with Russian troops.

The AES juntas have also pressured Western mining companies while laying the groundwork for greater economic cooperation with Russia.

The AES serves as a conduit for Russia’s efforts to supplant the West elsewhere on the continent, including Chad, Sudan, and Togo.

The AES states have also undermined neutral or Western-backed regional political and security institutions, such as ECOWAS and the MNJTF.

Russia’s entrenched presence in the Sahel and Libya is an opportunity to bolster its campaign to manufacture migration crises to destabilize Europe.

There is no evidence that Russia plans to base drones in the Sahel, but doing so would threaten NATO in the Mediterranean.

🔗 Critical Threats