VIENNA — Russian state-aligned military forces operating in the Central Sahel relied on at least 75 flights by military and military-linked aircraft between January 2025 and July 2026, according to a new analysis by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based research organization that tracks illicit networks.
The report, published Wednesday, examined Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data sourced from FlightRadar24 for aircraft models historically linked to Russian private military contractors or the Ministry of Defense, filtering for flights touching Mali, Burkina Faso or Niger.
Burkina Faso received the most flights of the three countries, at 56, followed by 38 to Mali, while Niger recorded only six, the report found. C4ADS attributed Burkina Faso’s volume in part to its position as a transit point between Mali and Niger, and to the intensity of attacks by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara during the period.
The busiest single operator was Flight Unit 224, a Russian Ministry of Defense-owned airline sanctioned by the United States in May 2023. The Russian Special Flight Squadron, which transports senior officials, conducted 14 flights, while Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations carried out 12. Despite the ministry’s ostensibly humanitarian mandate, prior media reporting linked it to military cargo transport to Mali, Syria and Iran.
C4ADS also flagged several private carriers it said remain unsanctioned by the U.S., EU or U.K. despite documented links to Russian military logistics, including Kyrgyzstan-registered Sapsan Airlines.
On routing, C4ADS said state-owned aircraft such as Flight Unit 224’s RA-82030 typically refueled at Russia’s Khmeimim air base in Syria and at Libyan sites including Al-Khadim before continuing to the Sahel. Private carriers more often transited commercial hubs in the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Türkiye.
Defense News published an investigation in April on a shadowy fleet of Russian military-affiliated cargo aircraft making more than a hundred flights to Algeria over the preceding year. Flight-tracking data, interviews and satellite imagery suggested the network was being used both to deliver fighter jets to the Algerian air force and as a logistics system for onward flights into the Sahel and West Africa.
C4ADS said its findings were preliminary and intended to identify avenues for further inquiry rather than draw firm conclusions, citing limitations including inconsistent ADS-B coverage and the possibility that operators manipulate transponder data to conceal destinations. The organization pointed to a growing number of flights through Togo and Algeria before or after Sahel stops as a subject warranting additional scrutiny.
Linus Höller is Defense News’ Europe correspondent and OSINT investigator. He reports on the arms deals, sanctions, and geopolitics shaping Europe and the world. He holds master’s degrees in WMD nonproliferation, terrorism studies, and international relations, and works in four languages: English, German, Russian, and Spanish.
