2023 Security and Wagner group

Burkina Faso. The Burkinabe junta is pushing France out of Burkina Faso while growing closer to Russia. Africa Intelligence reported that France will likely remove its special forces mission from Burkina Faso in February.[45] This move, if confirmed, follows months of worsening French-Burkinabe relations since Burkina Faso’s September 2022 coup. This relationship reached a new low after the junta asked France to withdraw its ambassador in early January 2023.[46] Russia is poised to take France’s spot as a security partner, as it has in Mali, where Wagner Group mercenaries are deployed.[47] Mali has facilitated talks between the Burkinabe junta and Russia, including a secret trip by the Burkinabe prime minister to Moscow in December 2022.[48] The Ghanian president and a Russian military observer also alleged that Russian Wagner mercenaries were in Burkina Faso and finalizing a deal with the junta in late December 2022.[49] Wagner has failed to make up for the decreasing Western counterterrorism support in Mali and instead committed numerous human rights abuses that benefit Salafi-jihadi recruitment.[50]

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/salafi-jihadi-movement-weekly-update-january-12-2023