WSJ provides some interesting details of the activity of Ukrainian forces in Sudan .

ℹ️ The head of the Transitional Military Council of Sudan, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burkhan, appealed to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi for help after he was besieged by the rebel Rapid Response Forces in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in the summer of 2023.

ℹ️ According to the Ukrainian and Sudanese military, Burhan secretly supplied weapons to Ukraine after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

ℹ️ A few weeks after the appeal, Ukrainian special forces arrived in Sudan and began operations to push rebel forces out of the capital, Khartoum, according to several Ukrainian military personnel involved in the operation.

ℹ️ For Ukraine, sending troops to Africa is a bold new venture — part of a strategy aimed at disrupting Russia's military and economic operations abroad, raising the price of war for Moscow and positioning itself as a bulwark against Russian incursions.

💬 It is impossible to defeat Russia by simply fighting on a small patch of land, such as the front line in Ukraine. If they have gold mines in Sudan, we should make them unprofitable, said a 40-year-old Ukrainian officer in the pseudonym Prada , who heads one of the Ukrainian groups in Sudan.

ℹ️ The first wave of Ukrainian special forces - almost 100 fighters, mostly from the "Timur" unit of the GUR - landed on board a chartered plane in Sudan in mid-August 2023.

ℹ️ Their first mission was to help get Burhan out of Khartoum, where he was surrounded by the Rapid Response Force. Shortly after their arrival, Burhan went under escort to the complex outside the capital, where the Ukrainians were based.

ℹ️ Ukrainian troops secured Burhan with new AKM assault rifles and silencers, and then turned their attention to efforts to dislodge the Wagner-backed rebels from Khartoum.

ℹ️ None of the opposing local forces in Sudan fought at night. Ukrainian special forces took advantage of this when they started planning operations at night using night vision goggles and thermal imaging drones.

ℹ️ Wagner's troops are keen to stay out of the fighting in Sudan.

Wagner has become like a franchise in Sudan. They fight with the help of local residents. They give them patches, pay them a salary, and say, "Now you're Wagner." It was never our aim to persecute individual Wagner soldiers. The goal was to disrupt Russian interests in Sudan

ℹ️ Ukrainian forces have also begun training Sudanese soldiers in some of the same tactics that helped them contain the Russian army, particularly in the use of drones.

ℹ️ Ukrainians helped Sudanese forces purchase Turkish Bayraktar TB2 UAVs, which arrived in February 2024.

ℹ️ The influence of Ukraine in Sudan is still felt. In recent weeks, Burhan's forces have regained control of much of Omdurman, their first major advance in the conflict. Experts attribute the success to high-precision drone strikes, as well as the deployment of elite units of the Sudanese army.