Newsday - Deployment of Russian mercenaries to Mali condemned by West - BBC Sounds

Western nations claim that if Russian mercenaries are deployed to Mali it will lead to conflict in the country and would "further deteriorate the security situation in West Africa".

The EU has recently imposed sanctions on the Wagner group, accusing it of involvement in serious human rights abuses.

Russia denies any government links with the shadowy private military company.

After France announced over the summer that they were going to start scaling back their counter terrorism presence in the country, Mali started looking towards the Russians.

Amy Mackinnon, is a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy magazine.

She says: "It's not like the Russians are the only game in town in the Sahel, in this region in Africa, there's a UN peace keeping operation there, there's other countries involved in the region, so it's hard to see that their only last resort was to go for the Wagner Group, so there's perhaps something else at play here that we are not seeing".