DISINFO: Ukraine coordinating jihadist attacks in Mali
SUMMARY
Ukrainian military instructors are training and arming al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali, according to local outlet Bamada. Soldiers in the Sahel state have reportedly uncovered Ukrainian documents and drones in the possession of militants. The discovery was made during recent operations by the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) following renewed attacks by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) jihadist group.
RESPONSE
No real evidence is provided to back the allegation, which appears to be an opportunistic attempt to exploit recent jihadist advances in the Sahel, including by Al Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about “terrorist Ukraine”. This disinformation story appeared as this narrative was being heavily promoted by pro-Kremlin sources and Russian officials, after Ukraine’s successful drone raid against Russian airbases on 01 June 2025, which Moscow tried to frame as a “terror attack”.
The original source of this story, the Malian outlet Bamada, has long been identified as part of the pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem in Africa. Planting stories in this kind of outlets to then reproduce them in more official media is one of the techniques of a well-known process called disinformation laundering.
See other examples of similar disinformation narrative, such as claims that attacks on Russia demonstrate the terrorist nature of Zelenskyy's regime, that Ukraine is a terrorist state that openly supports terrorist groups in the Sahel region, that Kyiv is training terrorists to fight Syria and Russia, that Ukraine is preparing terrorist attacks in Europe to disrupt peace talks, that Ukraine is involved in the assassination attempt on Trump, or that Ukraine may be involved in the attempt on Slovakia’s PM Robert Fico.