of rumors swirling for some weeks and months now that the malian government was looking to contract the notorious paramilitary mercenary group, the wagner group, to come into that country and in their mind secure that region in the north that continues to have very severe security issues and a great deal of impact to the civilian population. here s sergey lavrov, the foreign minister, trying to wash his hands of direct connections. take a listen. translator: mali has approached russian private military companies. we have nothing to do with that. this is an activity which has been carried out on a legitimate basis. reporter: now, there has been extensive reporting, including from cnn, showing close ties of the wagner group to the kremlin. so of course people take that with a pinch of salt. but you have this very direct criticism from the malian prime
minister squarely at the french robyn, saying that the security situation is untenable, that they feel the french are abandoning them in their fight in the saw hill region. though it must be said the french have themselves saved that government several times, particularly since 2012. and the sense that the french government is going to be withdrawing troops in the coming months and moving to a multilateral force, that certainly has provided an impetus to hire potentially wagner mercenaries, which has obviously geopolitical implications. robyn. it most certainly does. how does mali s own you talked about this. how does mali s own government instability, as you said, the french have bailed them out a number of times in recent year. so isn t their criticism of france somewhat ironic? reporter: it is totally ironic because the mali well, there s been two coups in recent
you currently have a big u.n. force as well operating in that region. one of the deadliest in terms of impact on those blue-helmet soldiers over the past few years. the bigger issue here is that this entrenched instability in the sawhel region doesn t appear to get better. you ve had countries in a way look at a simplistic metaphor but fall like dominoes to this instability. increasingly burkina faso, which was a more stable country, is seeing this. the big fear is not only these countries in the sawhel face this issue, but that it bleeds over into the gulf of guinea states like ivory coast, even ghana and other countries that haven t seen this kind of insecurity. but it s a big mess, and the wagner group coming in with advisers could just make it even messier. david mckenzie, thanks so much. always good to speak with you. coming up on cnn, it was a dominant performance for team usa on the links.
months in mali. the military s in control. it was a previous period of instability in 2012 which led to much of the country to be taken over by an insurgency and then by groups linked to al qaeda and isis. this band of instability stretching from mali, burkina faso, chad, and other parts of the saw hill is a massive read a headache for that region not only because of the terrible terror inflicted on civilians there, of course, but the broader implications. france currently has several thousand troops as part of an operation. they are based in neighboring chad. but heavily involved in the border region and specifically in mali. i think the french government has felt given the recent coups and the domestic pushback in france about this operation, that it s time to ease out of this conflict and move towards a
european union force. interestingly, the top u.s. commander for the african command was in that region, not in mali specifically in recent days. so there s a shuffle of the deck happening, and western powers certainly will be deeply uncomfortable with the wagner group moving into mali. they ve had influence and operations in mozambique, in central african republic, in libya, and their track record is mixed at best and certainly a way for the kremlin to get entrenched in these regions. robyn. that was going to be my next question. what does this mean practically on the ground? is there going to be an expansion, i suppose, of russian influence in africa like we saw during the cold war? and then what is the overlap with these mercenaries and their operations with, say, the french or even the americans in the region? reporter: it s very complicated and quite messy, and