The Los Angeles Times: French accuse Russian mercenaries of staging burials
UC political scientist condemns burial scene in Mali, West Africa
Video of soldiers burying bodies in Mali, West Africa, have surfaced, and the French military say the scene is staged and they believe the forces behind it are Russian mercenaries from The Wagner Group. They also say the group is trying to pin the scene on the French as a move to discredit the French forces operating in northern Mali; and is part of a coordinated campaign of information attacks that have been going on for months.
“The Wagner Group and the Malian Armed Forces appear to be taking disregard for human life to new levels in Mali,” Alexander Thurston, assistant professor of public and international affairs at the University of Cincinnati, told The Los Angeles Times.
Thurston’s focus is Islam and politics in northwest Africa, with a focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
French troops have been a major presence in Mali since helping to dislodge Islamist rebels from strongholds in northern Mali in 2013.
Featured image at top courtesy of Unsplash/James Wiseman.
Impact Lives Here
The University of Cincinnati is leading public urban universities into a new era of innovation and impact. Our faculty, staff and students are saving lives, changing outcomes and bending the future in our city's direction. Next Lives Here.
Related Stories
UC professor leads film students to the future
April 6, 2026
As a kid, at the age of 10, Marty Schiff’s dad gave him a Kodak Brownie movie camera, and that led to a lifetime of creating stories on film. He spent his summers with that camera, making eight-millimeter movies, with a camera that taught him how to thread a projector, change the film in a closet, and tell stories with the medium he loved. “I always wanted to go to Hollywood,” Schiff says. So later he did, with $200 in his pocket, and began a career that has spanned acting, directing, producing—pretty much everything with the exception of costumes (“I’m not really good with a sewing machine,” he says).
High Court offers protections for therapy speech
April 5, 2026
Jennifer Bard, a professor in the Donald P. Klekamp College of Law and the UC Department of Internal Medicine, spoke with journalists about the US Supreme Court ruling granting first amendment protections for speech offered during therapy sessions.
Scientists discover how snakes stand upright without limbs
April 3, 2026
Smithsonian magazine highlights a study co-authored by UC Professor Bruce Jayne, an expert in snake locomotion, about how snakes stand upright without arms or legs.