Video confirms fighting between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers in Sudan

A video confirmed on Tuesday that Ukraine and Russia have brought the war to Africa.

The audiovisual document, published by the

Kyiv Post

, shows a group of Ukrainian special forces after an assault on a rebel position in which several bodies appear, as well as a shot-at Russian military vehicle.

The video also shows two African soldiers and a Russian soldier arrested.

This answers the questions of Ukrainians to identify themselves.

The prisoner assures that his force is made up of 100 mercenaries from the Wagner group who traveled from his base in the Central African Republic to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

The Russian soldier confirms that his objective is to depose the country's Government.

Kyiv Post

reports that the Ukrainians in Sudan belong to the Timur special forces group, a team under the Intelligence Services of the Ministry of Defense, the GUR.

A GUR officer specialized in infiltrating behind Russian lines explained this week to EL PAÍS, on condition of anonymity, that they are recruiting volunteers willing to fight in Sudan.

The risk is high, according to this source, because they are covert operations, not officially protected by any institution.

The Ukrainian soldier who interrogates the Russian soldier in the video has an African soldier at his side who also serves as his interpreter.

The two African prisoners are blindfolded with yellow electrical tape, one of the colors that Ukrainian units had used to identify themselves during the Russian invasion war.

In September 2023, a video emerged on CNN of two bomb drones that attacked positions of the rebel Rapid Support Forces and Wagner units in Sudan.

Anonymous sources in kyiv indicated to American television that its Armed Forces were behind the operation.

Last November, Kyiv Post

also published a video, recorded by a drone, of an alleged assault by GUR men on several buildings where Russian soldiers and rebel militias were located.

It was precisely in September 2023 when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, held a meeting in Ireland with the president of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah al Burhan, the country's ruler after a coup d'état.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was also present at the meeting.

The statement from the Ukrainian presidency after the meeting emphasized that both leaders discussed security issues and the presence of Wagner's mercenaries in Sudan.

The US intelligence services have been warning since the beginning of 2023, coinciding with the start of this new civil war in the African country, of Wagner's greater involvement in Sudan with the aim of gaining access to the mining sector.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner, died in August 2023 in a plane crash and after threatening a coup against the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.

Since then, Wagner has become tightly controlled by the Russian state.

The Ukrainian Government has increased its diplomacy with Africa to gain support on that continent, but above all, to limit the Kremlin's influence among developing countries.

In the March 2022 United Nations Assembly resolution condemning the Russian invasion, of the 35 countries that abstained, 17 were African.

In a press conference last November with African media, Zelensky stressed that his country wants to be a strategic partner on the continent that contrasts with Russian "colonial ambitions."

In recent months, new embassies have been opened and bilateral agreements signed.

But kyiv does not officially acknowledge having participated in any military action in Sudan.

The GUR has already contemplated infiltrating Syria at the end of 2022 and attacking the Russian troops that support the Bashar al-Assad regime.

This was confirmed by US intelligence documents leaked in April 2023 to

The Washington Post

.

The plan contemplated acting together with Kurdish forces opposed to Assad.

It was Zelensky, these documents stated, who stopped the operation.

The GUR, commanded by Kirilo Budanov, is also responsible for sabotage against strategic infrastructure on Russian soil.

In recent weeks, an increase in Russian forces in Africa has emerged in the media and defense analysis centers.

The OSW, a Polish security policy studies institution, stated in a report dated January 31 that a new Russian unit named Africa Corps, under the tutelage of the Ministry of Defense, already has troops in Burkina Faso and estimates that in the future They will be found in Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, Sudan, but also Niger.

According to information from the OSW, the objective is for the Africa Corps to have 20,000 soldiers, a figure that is difficult to achieve because Wagner, who has been in these countries for years, would only have around 7,000 mercenaries at this time.

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