Since 2020, Russia has been expanding its presence in the Sahel region, seizing the initiative from Paris and Washington and enhancing its standing across sub-Saharan Africa. Recognizing that mounting instability and popular anger with incumbent regimes provided an opening to exploit, the Kremlin capitalized on the first of the region’s coups, in Mali, and supported those that followed, in Burkina Faso and Niger. In doing so, Moscow has signaled to global audiences that it retains a degree of freedom of action abroad despite efforts by the United States and Europe to isolate it after its invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian national security elites have profited from resources-for-security deals with embattled leaders in the region, offering services—direct military intervention, intelligence support, regime protection, and disinformation campaigns—in exchange for mining concessions and access to extractive industries. Yet more than five years on, the early appeal of those offerings has started to fade.…