In April 2025, Sudan's Rapid Support Forces seized an airstrip at the Al-Atrun oasis in Darfur and pushed toward Libya. A route to the border would let them receive weapons from Marshal Haftar and export the gold that funds their war. Russia has dealt with both sides, trading weapons for access to Sudan's gold.
Mali, a former French colony, has turned away from Paris and toward Moscow. Russian instructors, many of them Wagner veterans of the war in Ukraine, now help its army fight insurgents. In return, Moscow is eyeing Mali's gold, uranium and lithium. Is this sovereignty or a new dependence?
In 2025, Sudan's army drove the Rapid Support Forces out of Khartoum after two years of civil war. The war has displaced 14 million people inside Sudan, and more than three million have fled abroad. Behind the two generals stand foreign powers chasing gold and a foothold on the Red Sea.
On February 12, Sudan's foreign minister announced a deal with Moscow on a Russian naval base in Port Sudan. But his government, at war with the Rapid Support Forces, no longer even controls Khartoum. And after its losses in the Black Sea, does Russia's navy still need a base so far away?
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.