The Financial Times (FT) claimed in an X post that a graphic shows Wagner troops in Mali.

Screenshot/X

Verdict: False

The image shows French troops in 2013. The FT deleted the tweet and Facebook post and issued a correction.

Fact Check:

Wagner Group suffered severe losses after fighting with Tuareg rebels in northern Mali, according to The Wall Street Journal. Dozens of Russian mercenaries died during the fighting, with others captured, the outlet reported.

The FT tweet and Facebook post are accompanied by an image that shows an armed man with a face mask, whose text reads, “Russia’s Wagner Group has suffered significant battleground losses in Mali.”

This image does not show Wagner Group mercenaries. The soldier in the image has a French flag emblem on his uniform and is armed with what appears to be a FAMAS rifle variant, which is used by the French military. The vehicle in the image appears to be an ERC-90, an armored vehicle phased out by the French in 2022.

Through a reverse image search, Check Your Fact found that the image shows French troops in Mali in 2013, according to the image description on Getty Images. (RELATED: Was The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Struck by Houthi Rebels?)

“A soldier of the French foreign legion wearing a skeleton mask stands next to an armored vehicule in a street in Niono, on January 20, 2013,” reads part of the image description.

The FT deleted the tweets after a Check Your Fact inquiry. An FT spokesperson told Check Your Fact that “[we] have issued a correction” and linked to the tweet about it.

Correction: a previous tweet about this story was mistakenly posted with an outdated image from Mali https://t.co/9LwgSAShIL

— Financial Times (@FT) July 31, 2024

“Correction: a previous tweet about this story was mistakenly posted with an outdated image from Mali,” the tweet reads.