Takeaways from AP's investigation into Russia's Africa Corps in Mali

DAKAR. Senegal (AP) — Dozens of people who have fled Mali tell The Associated Press that a new Russian military unit that replaced the Wagner mercenary group this year is carrying out abuses, including rapes and beheadings, as it teams up with Mali’s military to hunt down extremists.

The refugees said the Africa Corps, which reports to Russia's Defense Ministry, is using the same tactics as Wagner. Their accounts, collected during rare access to the Mauritanian border, have not been reported by international media until now.

West Africa’s vast Sahel region has become the deadliest place in the world for extremism. The military governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in recent years have turned from Western allies to Russia for help combating the fighters affiliated with al-Qaida or the Islamic State group.

The Africa Corps replaced Wagner six months ago. That sparked hope for less brutality among weary civilians who the United Nations says have been abused by all sides. But refugees described a new reign of terror by the “white men” in the vast and largely lawless territory. The AP spoke to 34 refugees. Most spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Here are takeaways from the AP investigation.

Two refugees showed videos of villages they said were burned by Africa Corps. Two others said they found bodies of loved ones with liver and kidneys missing. Previous AP reporting has tracked social media channels, likely administered by Wagner members, that shared images of men in military uniform butchering corpses of what appear to be Malian civilians, hacking out organs and posing with severed limbs.

“It’s a scorched-earth policy,” said a Malian village chief who fled to Mauritania last month for the second time. “The soldiers speak to no one. Anyone they see, they shoot. No questions, no warning. People don’t even know why they are being killed.”

He added: “There is no difference between Wagner and Africa Corps.”

Malian authorities never publicly acknowledged Wagner’s presence, and have not acknowledged Africa Corps. But Russian state media in recent weeks have published reports from Mali praising Africa Corps for defending the country from “terrorists," and Russia’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed that the unit is active “at the request of the Malian authorities,” providing ground escorts, search-and-rescue operations and other work.

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to AP questions.

Reported abuses against civilians intensified when Wagner teamed up with the underfunded Malian army in 2021. According to private security analysts, Mali paid Russia about $10 million a month for Wagner’s assistance. While the group was never officially under the Kremlin’s command, it had close ties to Russia’s intelligence and military.

Moscow began developing the Africa Corps as a rival to Wagner after its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in 2023 following his brief armed rebellion in Russia that challenged the rule of President Vladimir Putin.

It is unclear whether Mali’s agreement remains the same for Africa Corps. Much is unknown about the unit's operations, including the number of fighters, which analysts estimate at around 2,000.

Not all Africa Corps fighters are Russian. Several refugees told the AP they saw Black men speaking foreign languages. The European Council on Foreign Relations in a recent report said the unit recruits from Russia, Belarus and African states.

The hunt by Africa Corps and Malian forces for militants intensified in September, when JNIM fighters imposed an unprecedented blockade on fuel into Mali from neighboring countries.

Experts say it’s impossible to know how many people are being killed and assaulted in Mali, especially in remote areas, while journalists and aid workers have limited access to the country.

“There is a lot of people raped, attacked, killed. Families are separated, there is no doubt about that,” said Sukru Cansizoglu, the representative in Mauritania for the U.N. refugee agency. But “it is sometimes difficult to really pinpoint who are the perpetrators.”

Civilians, under pressure from both the militants and the Africa Corps and Malian fighters, are “between a rock and a hard place,” said Heni Nsaibia from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

As one refugee put it: “If you don’t tell the army you saw jihadists, the army will kill you. But if you tell them, the jihadists will find you and kill you.”

Legal experts said the shift from Wagner to Africa Corps makes the Russian government directly accountable for its military unit's actions.

“Despite the rebranding, there is striking continuity in personnel, commanders, tactics and even insignia between Wagner and Africa Corps,” said Lindsay Freeman, senior director of international accountability at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Human Rights Center, which has monitored the conflict in Mali.

Because Africa Corps is embedded in Russia’s Ministry of Defense, it can be treated as an organ of the Russian state under international law, Freeman said. “That means any war crimes committed by Africa Corps in Mali are, in principle, attributable to the Russian government under the rules on state responsibility.”

A woman is helped outside a treatment room of a health clinic in Douankara, Mauritania, Sunday, Nov. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Men from northern Mali who fled attacks by the Malian Army and Africa Corps sit in a tent at a makeshift camp in Douankara, Mauritania, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

A Fulani woman who fled violence in Mali sits at a camp in Fassala, Mauritania, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025, where she has found refuge. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

A four-year-old girl who was injured during a drone strike in Mali, is treated in a health clinic in Douankara, Mauritania, Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Afay, a Malian refugee, shows images of her burned village after Africa Corps razed the marketplace to the ground, she said while sitting at a camp in Douankara, Mauritania, Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

A village chief who fled northern Mali’s scorched earth policy of Africa Corps, sits in Douankara, Mauritania, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

A Fulani woman weaves in the traditional style of her community at her new home in Makhal Oulad Zeid, Mauritania, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Moyme, who fled Mali in fear of the Malian Army and its Russian allies, poses for a portrait Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in a camp in Mbera, Mauritania where she has found refuge. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Bakary Bah, who fled Mali in 2023 when more than a dozen people including his brother where killed in his village, sits for a portrait in a camp in Mbera, Mauritania, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Fulani community members who have recently fled violence in Mali, take refuge in Makhal Oulad Zeid, Mauritania, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

A herder moves livestock through the refugee camp in Mbera, Mauritania, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

A mother holds the clenched hand of her daughter, who has not unclenched it in the eight months since fleeing mercenaries in Mali and finding refuge in Douankara, Mauritania, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Alabama is forcing the committee that will set the College Football Playoff bracket to revisit an old question: Should a 12-team tournament to determine the national champion include a program with three losses?

And Duke is bringing up a new head-scratcher that nobody really thought of before: Could a team possibly make the playoff with five?

Those two mysteries were the main ones left after a day of shuffling in the conference title games set the stakes for Sunday’s big reveal.

Alabama’s 28-7 loss to CFP No. 3 Georgia and unranked Duke’s 27-20 win in overtime over CFP No. 16 Virginia were the key results Saturday — leaving the selection committee to sleep on which three teams out of five contenders vying for the final spots in the bracket are worthy, and which two stay home.

No. 9 Alabama (10-3), No. 10 Notre Dame (10-2) and No. 12 Miami (10-2) are in the hunt for two of those spots.

No. 25 James Madison (12-1) and Duke (8-5) — unranked but the newly crowned champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference — are the candidates for the other.

Normally, the sports world doesn’t start paying attention to Duke until hoops season reaches full swing. Maybe someone among the ever-present throng of Duke haters on social media would title this one: “Blue Devils ruin football, too!”

Duke’s win gives the ACC a champion with five losses, which places the conference on the cusp of not placing a single team into the tournament.

Blue Devils coach Manny Diaz is more than fine with comparing his team to James Madison.

“They don’t have a win like this. They don’t have a win against a team like that. That’s a big-time team right there in Virginia,” he said. “Seven wins in this conference? Seven Power Four wins compared to zero? No, that’s a playoff team. These guys deserve to be in.”

It is true that Duke’s strength of schedule is about 50 spots higher than James Madison’s. But in most of the rest of the metrics — including that all-important loss column — the Dukes of James Madison look much stronger than Duke.

This is how the ACC got into this pickle:

— No. 20 Tulane won the American Conference.

— The No. 25 Dukes won the Sun Belt.

— The unranked Blue Devils beat Virginia.

CFP rules call for the five best-ranked conference titlists to earn automatic spots in the 12-team bracket. Four of those spots, or so the thinking went, were supposed to go to the Power Four conferences. But that’s not what the rules say, and so, it comes down to whether the committee ranks Duke ahead of James Madison to keep the unthinkable from happening.

Because two teams from outside the top 25 won their conferences and will receive automatic bids, it means the top 10 teams — not 12 — from Sunday's rankings will make the playoffs.

Heading into Saturday, one thought was that the committee placed Alabama at No. 9 last week, flip-flopping it with Notre Dame, so that if the Crimson Tide lost, there would still be room to slip them into the playoff, even with that 10-3 record.

The ugliness of Saturday's loss — a 21-point beatdown that looked worse at times — might change that calculus.

Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer is leaning on the idea that a team shouldn’t be penalized for playing in its conference title game.

“How that can can hurt you and keep you out of the playoff?” he said.

Last year, Alabama was the odd man out after being idle on championship Saturday, but watching SMU slide in ahead of it after — what else? — a loss in its conference title game. But that loss was close. Alabama's wasn't.

Notre Dame and Miami, which were idle Saturday, are looking at other things.

Irish coach Marcus Freeman is leaning on the argument that the real comparison should be between his team and Alabama — not between Notre Dame and BYU or Notre Dame and Miami. He wants nothing to do with that Miami comparison, because the Irish lost to the Hurricanes in Week 1.

Committee chair Hunter Yurachek has been opaque, at best, about how the committee judges that result.

One possibility Sunday is that, thanks to No. 11 BYU's lopsided loss to Texas Tech, Notre Dame and Miami could be scrunched right next to each other in the rankings. That, some believe, would make it almost impossible to ignore the head-to-head matchup.

That’s what Miami coach Mario Cristobal is banking on.

“Same record. Identical metrics and then, again, Miami beats Notre Dame,” he said.

The game pitting the two best teams in the country didn't have much impact on anything regarding playoff seeding.

No. 2 Indiana beat No. 1 Ohio State 13-10 in a thrilling, defensive slugfest that will make the Hoosiers — yes, the Indiana Hoosiers — the top team in the country heading into the playoff.

All the discourse about Alabama and the meaning of title games aside, it would be hard to see Ohio State dropping below the No. 4 spot and forfeiting the first-round bye that goes to the top four.

Maybe the committee places the Buckeyes at 2 or 3 to at least keep alive the tantalizing prospect of a rematch in the national final on Jan. 19.

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Alabama head coach Kalen Deboer speaks to an official during the first half of a Southeastern Conference championship NCAA college football game between Georgia and Alabama, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Georgia defensive back Daylen Everette (6) runs an intercepted ball against Alabama wide receiver Germie Bernard (5) during the first half of a Southeastern Conference championship NCAA college football game, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)