Ukrainian drones ‘strike Russian targets’ inside Sudan

The newspaper Kyiv Post says that the Ukrainian Special Forces have conducted three drone attacks targeting “Russian mercenaries” and their “local terrorist partners” in Sudan over the last few weeks.  

Yesterday, the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post published a video clip on its website, purportedly showing three aerial bombardments by drones targeting vehicles in undisclosed locations within Sudan “in recent weeks”.

The operation is part of an ongoing effort to “clean up the Wagner PMC, their local terrorists and the Russian Federation’s special services”, a source in the Ukrainian defence sector told the newspaper.

According to the Kyiv Post, Ukrainian forces have been active in Sudan for several months. In November of last year, the newspaper obtained video clips showing sniping operations “carried out by Ukrainian special forces against Russian mercenaries in Sudan”.

This is part of Ukraine’s broader strategy to “destroy Russian war criminals anywhere in the world, wherever they are”, as was proclaimed by Ukrainian military intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov in May 2023, the article says.

Citing a Sudanese source speaking to CNN last year, the newspaper highlighted that “90 per cent of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) weapons come from Wagner”, with support ongoing even following the assassination of the Wagner Group commander, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a plane crash in August 2023.

Wagner presence

As reported by Radio Dabanga on Saturday, an ongoing investigation by the Darfur Bar Lawyers (DBA) is looking into the role of the Wagner group in the current war in Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF.

The DBA first dispatched a team to investigate military presence of the Russian Wagner Group in the western regions of Darfur after the fall of the Al Bashir regime in 2019.

In June 2022, it published a preliminary report on the presence of Wagner mercenaries in South Darfur. The combatants were specifically accused of attacks on artisanal gold miners in the area of Um Dafoug, close to the border with the Central African Republic (CAR).

The Africa Defense Forum (ADF) wrote in July last year that Wagner mercenaries “have trained RSF fighters and now supply them with weapons from bases in Libya”. The same month, the British sanctioned three companies in Sudan that they alleged are a front for the Russian Wagner Group.

Diplomatic relations

On September 24 last year, Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, chairperson of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council and commander-in-chief of the SAF, held an “unscheduled meeting” with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, during a refuelling stop at Shannon Airport on Ireland’s west coast.

While not mentioning any groups by name, Zelenskiy said that he and El Burhan “discussed common security challenges, namely the activities of illegal armed groups financed by Russia”.

The government of Sudan has also maintained close ties with Russia. Sudan was one of 58 countries to abstain from voting in favour of United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/3 in April 2022 condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In June last year, Malik Agar, the deputy chairman of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, visited Russia along with the undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other officials, to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.