Commander responsible for Bakhmut and Soledar offensives among the eliminated: new details of Wagner defeat in Mali. Photo and video

In Northwest Africa, rebels successfully defeated a group of the Russian military private company Wagner, which was trying to capture the city of Tinzaouaten in Mali. Some of the militants were captured, but most were killed, including one of the Russian commanders responsible for the offensive on the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Soledar.

Lotos (literally Lotus, call sign) took over the PMC after the deaths of its financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and former leader Dmitry Utkin. Russian pro-war bloggers reported on the losses of the armed group in one of the countries of the African Sahel.

Earlier, photos and videos of the defeat of a convoy of government forces and Wagner mercenaries in the Republic of Mali near the border with Algeria were posted online. The rebels announced the elimination of dozens of Russian fighters and junta soldiers. They also shot down a Mi-24 military helicopter belonging to the Malian Armed Forces. However, officials claimed that it "made an emergency landing due to technical problems."

A local official confirmed the defeat of the convoy of Malian troops and PMC mercenaries in a conversation with AFP. According to him, they lost at least 17 people, while Russian Z-channels report about 50 dead.

The incident has stirred up the Russian pro-war blogging community, which has been sharing the footage for two days, reporting "terrible losses" among PMC members. They named several mercenaries whose deaths have been confirmed.

"A helicopter tried to help a Wagner PMC convoy that was ambushed in Mali. It was shot down. Some of the Wagner guys were taken prisoner, now they are being ransomed", "It's really true, there are many killed and captured, our guys from Wagner in Mali. They were ambushed", "Also, unfortunately, our good friend, the administrator of the Grey Zone channel (call sign 'Bely' or literally White) was killed in the battle," several propagandists wrote.

They first published a photo of the alleged administrator of the channel. ASTRA investigators (the publication calls itself an independent Russian media outlet) noted that if this is true, it is a 31-year-old native of the Lipetsk region of the Russian Federation, Nikita Fedyanin.

He lived in Moscow, and five years ago he posted a video on his YouTube channel called "The Special Purpose Center of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation."

It was the footage of the FSS soldiers working in the mountains, and at the end a monument to the fallen members of the unit was shown. In the comments, 'Bely' also answered the question whether 'Hard Ingush', a FSS blogger who was writing about Russian operations in the North Caucasus at the time, was in the video (he probably knew him and also served in the region).

"The owner of this channel was listed in other people's contacts as 'Nikita Febos (Moscow)' and 'Respected Person'. Fedyanin also posted a picture on VK where his head has photoshopped instead of Putin's, standing near Kremlin," ASTRA writes.

In his latest post for his Z-channel, Bely admitted that Wagner is in one of the countries of the African Sahel, where they are "hot, literally and figuratively," and cynically added, "Everything is just as we like it."

The Russians also report that another well-known commander of the Wagner PMC, Anton "Lotos" Elizarov, responsible for the occupiers' offensives on Soledar and Bakhmut during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was killed in Mali too.

"The good news continues to come from Mali direcion - according to the channels associated with Wagner, it also became known about the elimination of the person who headed the PMC after the murder of Putin's chef Prigozhin and Nazi Utkin, namely the commander with the call sign "Lotos". Although a very media-friendly, thy are very well-known Rashists in those circles, who took part in hostilities in Ukraine, in particular in the occupation of Soledar," commented Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Volunteer Army "South".

It is known that Russian mercenaries have been present in Mali since 2021: in 2020, the African republic was once again seized by a military junta, which a year later invited mercenaries from the Wagner PMC there, allegedly to ensure security.

As reported, last September, a Russian military transport aircraft Il-76 crashed at the Malian airport of Gao. It was allegedly used by mercenaries of the Wagner PMC and several groups of militants were on board at the time of the crash.

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