In 2014, Sudanese soldiers raped over 220 women and girls in the Darfur village of Tabit, an hour's drive from UN peacekeepers. The largest peacekeeping mission in UN history, costing over $1.5 billion a year, said it had found no evidence. Soon after it left, Darfur faced its second genocide in twenty years.
In July 2025, Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia's deputy foreign minister for the Middle East and Africa, was abruptly dismissed. Shortly before, his closest aide had been sent to Lefortovo on charges of high treason. Now Bogdanov himself is reportedly a suspect, and his old department is being handed to outsiders.
Sergey Kozlov, Russia's ambassador to Saudi Arabia since 2017, organized the Russian side of the Riyadh talks with the United States. Earlier, as ambassador to Yemen, he pocketed his staff's pay, billed for receptions that never happened and took cuts from construction deals. Then he was promoted.
In 2017, near Sudan's Abu Hamad gold mine, Wagner mercenaries reportedly shot dead at least 73 protesters, including children. Prigozhin's firm mined gold with near-forced labor and mercury, helping Omar al-Bashir evade sanctions. Now Sudan lies in ruins after a civil war that has displaced 11 million people.