Mali breaks diplomatic relations with Ukraine. What happened there and how can we understand it?

The military junta ruling the West African country of Mali, led by Colonel Abdoulaye Maigui, announced the "immediate severance of diplomatic relations with Ukraine."

The reason for this step by the Bamako authorities were recent public statements by Kyiv officials, which the Malian authorities interpreted as recognition of Ukraine's role in the July defeat by Tuareg rebels of a large column of Malian government troops and mercenaries from the Wagner PMC, operating in Mali at the invitation of local authorities as part of the Russian "Africa Corps."

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The message posted on the official website of the transitional government of Mali contains links to statements by the speaker of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, Andrei Yusov, according to whom Kirill Budanov’s department allegedly provided rebels from the Azawad group with the “necessary information” to carry out an attack on a government military convoy.

_{Junta spokesman Abdoulaye Maiga said the current Mali authorities were “shocked by this statement” and accused Kyiv of violating the country’s sovereignty.}

As a reminder, last week, the Malian army admitted to suffering significant losses during the multi-day fighting that erupted on July 25. However, neither the Malian military nor representatives of the Wagner PMC provided precise casualty figures; media reports have cited varying estimates of Wagner losses, ranging from 20 to 80.

Already on August 3, the Ukrainian Ambassador to Mali’s neighboring Senegal, Yuriy Pivovarov, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of this country because of a comment about the Tuaregs in Mali, published on the Ukrainian Embassy’s Facebook page. According to Senegalese authorities, Pivovarov expressed “unconditional support” for the Tuaregs.

_{To be clear, it should be noted that the long-standing struggle of the Tuareg tribes of the Sahel to establish their own independent state is one of the time bombs left behind by the French colonialists after their withdrawal from the region in the middle of the last century.}

The fact is that the independent African states that emerged were constituted within administrative borders carved out by the colonizers for their own convenience, which in no way took into account the ethnic picture of the region and which naturally became a source of permanent interstate conflicts in decolonized West Africa.

_{The Tuareg factor in the Sahel can be compared to a similar factor of another stateless people – the Kurds in the Middle East , whose historical lands are now divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.}

And just as in the case of the Kurds, whose armed struggle for their statehood is a factor in many years of destabilization in the Middle East, the struggle of the Tuaregs worries the countries of the Sahel, whose authorities rightly fear that the hypothetical success of Tuareg separatism in Mali will become a trigger for similar actions by the Tuaregs already in neighboring countries.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the current military regime in Mali is illegitimate, stemming from the military coup that overthrew the previous government. The junta promised new elections, but has yet to hold them.

And it is precisely this lack of legitimacy that is the basis for action against the new regime of its many opponents (there are not only Tuaregs, but also other tribes, as well as Islamic fundamentalists from groups associated with the terrorist IS).

Regarding the Ukrainian connection and the reaction to it, it's worth noting that today's statement alone does not constitute evidence of a severance of diplomatic relations. It must be supported by a series of concrete actions – from the recall of Malian diplomats from Kyiv (which, incidentally, the country has none in Ukraine) to the submission of official documents to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the severance.

In general, this story seems rather ridiculous, especially in the context of the complete absence of either Ukrainian interests in Mali or Malian interests in Ukraine. From Kyiv's perspective, all this PR on this African topic is nothing more than a desire to somehow spite Russia, at least on another continent.

And also, given the certain similarity of the genesis of the current version of the statehood of Mali, which arose as a fragment of the colonial empire, with the statehood of Ukraine, whose current borders are also the result of cutting by external players without taking into account ethnic and cultural-historical factors.