MOSCOW, April 30, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Russia on Thursday said its forces would stay in Mali, rejecting a call from Tuareg rebels for Moscow to withdraw after separatists and jihadists launched the largest attacks against the military junta's rule in 15 years.

Russia is a crucial military backer to the Malian government.

Last weekend, Moscow's Africa Corps paramilitary unit pulled out of a key northern town in rebel attacks that also targeted the country's capital and killed the defence minister.

A spokesman for the Tuareg-dominated separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) told AFP during a visit to Paris on Wednesday that "the regime will fall, sooner or later". He urged Russia to pull out of the entire country.

"Russia is present there in connection with the necessity declared by the authorities," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in response to a question by AFP.

"Russia will continue, including in Mali, to fight against extremism, terrorism and other negative manifestations. And it will continue to provide assistance to the current authorities," he added.

Mali was due to hold a funeral on Thursday for Defence Minister Sadio Camara, considered the mastermind behind the junta's pivot to Russia.

Since 2012, the west African nation has faced a profound security crisis fuelled in particular by violence from groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as local criminal gangs and pro-independence groups.

Mali's junta government, like its military counterparts in neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso, have severed ties with former colonial ruler France, moving closer politically and militarily to Moscow.

Russia's Africa Corps unit is overseen by the defence ministry in Moscow, a successor to the Wagner paramilitary force that was deployed across several countries in Africa for years.

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin died in 2023 in an unexplained plane crash in Russia, two months after he staged a mutiny against Russia's top military brass.