Ukraine’s shadow war

As Russian mercenaries and their Malian allies advanced toward Tinzaouaten on 25 July 2024, few could have expected the patrol to end in catastrophe. Two days later, their convoy lay shattered near the Algerian-Malian border, its vehicles burned, and a supporting helicopter lost, with around 130 casualties confirmed.

Ukrainian intelligence officials, seeking to offset the propaganda damage caused by the withdrawal from the Krynky bridgehead a week earlier, quickly seized on Russia’s defeat in Mali and turned it into a symbol of Russian military incompetence, mocking Moscow’s inability to protect even its most experienced mercenaries far from home.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, some officials went even further, with Kyiv Post releasing an exclusive photograph of Tuareg rebels posing with a Ukrainian flag after the ambush on the Russian mercenaries. This was accompanied by a statement from Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) who stopped short of confirming direct Ukrainian involvement but strongly implied that Kyiv had assisted the rebels.

While the defeat was a serious humiliation for Russia, the controversy that followed exposed something equally important: Ukraine was already building a wider strategy to confront Moscow far beyond the main battlefield.

The strategy

Ukraine’s approach relies on exporting capabilities rather than deploying large military formations. The HUR appears to lead many overseas training, liaison and paramilitary missions, while the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, has become closely associated with sabotage, long-range drone strikes and maritime operations.

The model is deliberately light. Small teams provide local partners with intelligence, target identification, FPV-drone expertise and technical assistance, while sabotage operations focus on vessels, ports and infrastructure tied to Russian power. Plausible deniability allows Kyiv to impose costs without openly creating new military fronts.

The strategy is designed to stretch Moscow’s resources by forcing it to defend military, commercial and political assets across a much wider area. At the same time, it seeks to disrupt Wagner and Africa Corps networks, threaten the oil revenues and sanctions-evasion routes sustaining the war, and undermine Russia’s reputation as a dependable security partner.

The approach, however, carries considerable risks. Ukraine’s local partners pursue their own objectives, and cooperation with rebel or politically controversial groups can quickly create diplomatic costs. Exposed operations may also provoke retaliation, while official denials and incomplete evidence often make it difficult to determine exactly how far Kyiv’s involvement extends. Those tensions are clearest in the theatres where the campaign has already taken shape, such as Africa.

The African front

The most direct version of this strategy appeared in Sudan. From 2023, Ukrainian special forces were reported to be supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces against the Rapid Support Forces, which had maintained links with Wagner and Russian commercial networks involved in the country’s gold trade. Their role reportedly centered on reconnaissance, drone operations and training rather than the deployment of a large combat formation. Yet footage obtained by western media, such as Le Monde, in late 2023, showed Ukrainian operatives taking a direct part in the conflict, with Ukrainian sources confirming to the French journal that “Ukrainian special forces, who collect military intelligence, are currently positioned in [Sudan].”

Mali represented a more indirect and politically dangerous application of the same model. Months after Tinzaouaten, The Washington Post reported that cooperation between Ukrainian military intelligence and Tuareg-led rebels had begun in early 2024. Some rebel personnel reportedly travelled through Mauritania to Ukraine, where they received instruction in manufacturing and operating small explosive drones. Kyiv later denied supplying drones, while the Tuareg alliance denied receiving foreign assistance during the battle itself.

That ambiguity may have protected the operational relationship, but it failed politically. Ukraine could have avoided formally accepting responsibility while still benefiting from Russia’s losses, yet Yusov’s remarks gave Mali and Niger grounds to sever diplomatic relations with Kyiv. Burkina Faso later joined them in writing to the United Nations Security Council to accuse Ukraine of supporting armed groups in the Sahel.

The Mediterranean front

In Syria, Ukraine reportedly exported the drone expertise developed against Russia to forces fighting what was, at the time, Moscow’s closest Middle Eastern ally, Bashar al-Assad. Ukrainian intelligence sent approximately twenty experienced drone operators and around 150 FPV drones to rebel headquarters in Idlib several weeks before the offensive that toppled the Syrian regime in December 2024. The assistance was linked to the rebel coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, making the operation particularly politically sensitive, since, at the time, the group was still listed as a terror organization by the West.

While Ukraine’s contribution was small compared with the wider rebel campaign, HTS’s victory offered Kyiv the prospect of a major strategic gain. Assad’s collapse placed Russia’s two principal Syrian bases, Hmeimim and Tartus, in jeopardy. Together, they had provided Moscow with its most important military foothold in the Mediterranean, reducing its dependence on moving forces and supplies through the Turkish Straits.

Russia ultimately retained access while negotiating with Syria’s new rulers, amid reported Israeli lobbying in Washington. Even so, the outcome remained a blow to Moscow, as Damascus shifted closer to Turkey, Arab states and the West, and further away from Russia.

Alongside its support for local partners, Ukraine expanded the shadow campaign into the Mediterranean Sea, directly targeting Russia’s maritime lifelines. In December 2025, an SBU official stated that Ukrainian aerial drones had struck the Qendil, a tanker associated with Russia’s shadow fleet, in neutral Mediterranean waters more than 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine. The vessel was empty but reportedly sustained critical damage. It was the first acknowledged Ukrainian strike against a shadow-fleet tanker in the Mediterranean. Another ship, the Arctic Metagaz, was nearly sunk in March 2026 by Ukrainian naval drones, allegedly coming from Libya.

These attacks also raised questions about how Ukraine was operating so far from home. In May 2026, the discovery of an Ukrainian explosives-laden naval drone inside a cave on the Greek island of Lefkada provided strong evidence that Ukrainian forces might have hidden caches along the Mediterranean coast. Greek authorities believed it had become trapped after malfunctioning, although its launch point and intended target remained unknown.

The Baltic front

The Baltic became another theatre for Ukraine’s campaign, with long-range strikes targeting the infrastructure that sustains Russia’s war economy. Drones have repeatedly struck or disrupted ports central to Russian crude-oil and petroleum-product exports on the Baltic, including Ust-Luga, Primorsk and Vysotsk.

Ukraine also scored a major propaganda victory by striking St Petersburg’s oil terminal and targeting naval facilities at nearby Kronstadt just as the city opened its annual international economic forum on the 3rd of June 2026. As Vladimir Putin was flaunting Russia’s battlefield advances before foreign officials and investors, the plume of smoke rising over St Petersburg offered a stark reminder that victory remained a distant prospect.

Winning ground, losing reach

Ukraine understands that it cannot defeat Russia by matching its larger neighbor soldier for soldier and weapon for weapon. Its answer is to deny Moscow a safe rear, making the consequences of the war felt wherever Russian power operates: inside Russia, across its overseas bases, among its mercenary networks and along the maritime routes financing its campaign. The approach also aligns with a wider Western interest in reducing Russia’s ability to threaten its neighbors without entering a direct NATO-Russia war.

Even if this campaign does not immediately change the balance on the Ukrainian front, its consequences may outlast the war itself. Russia’s position abroad has already been weakened by Assad’s fall and the disruption of networks built across Africa and the Middle East, some of which may take years to rebuild. Even in the case of victory, if Russia fails to contain Ukraine’s shadow campaign, it may emerge from the war with more territory in Ukraine but a diminished empire beyond it.