After Russia rejected a renewal of the sanctions, which targeted anyone breaking or delaying a 2015 peace settlement, impeding humanitarian delivery, abusing human rights, and enlisting children as combatants, the sanctions in Mali will be lifted on Thursday, August 31.
Independent UN sanctions monitors have been informing the UN Security Council that violence against women and other “grave human rights abuses” are being used by Mali’s military and its foreign security allies, thought to be the Wagner mercenary group from Russia, to foment terrorism. In the past, the UN Security Council, of which Russia is a member, has decided to continue both independent monitoring and UN sanctions on Mali.
However, on Thursday, 13 members of the Security Council voted in favour of a resolution to extend UN sanctions and independent monitoring for an additional year, which was authored by France and the United Arab Emirates. However, Russia exercised its veto, while China chose to abstain.
Russia, on the other hand, suggested immediately eliminating the independent monitoring but still extending UN sanctions in Mali for one final year. Only Russia cast a yes vote; Japan cast a negative vote, while the other 13 members chose to abstain.
Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told the UN Security Council that Russia wanted to eliminate the independent monitoring “to stifle publication of uncomfortable truths about Wagner’s actions in Mali, which require attention.”
In response, Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said it was speculation and resembled “paranoia,” adding that Russia was “upholding the interests of the affected country – Mali, as the council is supposed to do.”
The US has also charged Wagner, which has around 1,000 militants in Mali, with orchestrating the junta’s sudden request for the withdrawal of a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. By December, the ten-year operation should be over.
In 2021, Wagner joined forces with the junta that had taken control of Mali following coups in 2020 and 2021 to combat an Islamist uprising.
President Vladimir Putin ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian government after Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin perished in a plane crash in Russia last week.
This month, the military coup in Mali addressed to the Security Council to that the sanctions be rescinded.
