Russian military actors went to Niger, Mali close to coup dates, data shows – By Patrick Turner (Defense One) / Sept 7, 2023
A few Russians seem to have picked an odd time for sightseeing in Africa.
Just days after a July coup d’état in the African nation of Niger, a person linked to the Russian military made his way through the country’s closed borders to its capital of Niamey, then visited several military sites, according to metadata analysis conducted by Florida-based behavior analytics company Torchlight AI.
A week earlier, two Russians associated with the Wagner mercenary group had trekked from Russia and Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine to Mali, which was controlled by a junta government aligned with the one that took over Niger, according to Torchlight AI.
And in the weeks leading up to the Aug. 30 coup in Gabon, the company traced the movements of a locally based person between the Russian embassy and various Gabonese government and military installations.
The analysis, shared exclusively with Defense One, raises questions about Russian agents’ movements in unstable African countries. But it also shows the promise of using AI to glean patterns from commercial data sets.
