Niger, Russian troops enter the base hosting US soldiers

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A group of Russian soldiers has entered a base in Niger occupied, until now, by US soldiers. The operation, reported by the agency Reuterscomes following the Niamey military junta ordered Washington to withdraw its approximately 1000 men from the Sahelian country, a former pro-Western stronghold ousted by the coup d’état in the summer of 2023.

A US official interviewed by Reuters declared that the situation “is manageable in the short term”, also because Moscow’s troops have settled in a different hangar from the same structure: Airbase 101, located near the Diori Hamani International Airport of the capital.

It is already less clear what the developments might be, given the fibrillations on the Moscow-Washington axis and the increasingly restless scenario of the Sahel: the sub-Saharan region pervaded by a whirlwind of coups d’état and the rise of military juntas at odds with the former partner of the USA and the EU. The only military contingent remaining in the country is the Italian one. The Farnesina has not yet expressed its opinion and lets Il Sole 24 Ore know that the situation is evolving, while the Kremlin limits itself to commenting that Russia is “developing relations” with African countries.

Moscow’s growth in the region

US Defense Secretary Loyd Austin tries to downplay the incident and explains that at the moment there are no “significant problems” in Moscow’s move, also because the Russians do not “have access” to US forces or their equipment. Certainly the penetration of Moscow’s troops, now also claimed by the Kremlin, marks a new progress in Russia’s expansion in the Sahel, along a strategy marked by military and economic agreements with governments increasingly hostile to the old Western partners.

Mali broke the ice in 2021 with an agreement between the military junta and the Russian contractors of the former Wagner company, an agreement followed by documented contacts between the authorities of Burkina Faso in the following years and the talks between Niger and Russia following the coup State that overthrew the pro-Western leader Mohammed Bazoum. Moscow has filled the gap left by the farewell of Western missions in the region, marked by a climate of ever-increasing intolerance towards the former French colonists and, now, the American troops themselves.