Russia: Old Catholic Priest Fined For Anti-War Sermons – Analysis

Aleksandr Khmelyov lights Easter candle, St Petersburg, April 2021 Photo Credit: Artem Leshko (RFE/RL Current Time)

 July 31, 2025 

By F18News

By Victoria Arnold

An Old Catholic priest has become the latest religious figure to be prosecuted for preaching against Russia’s war in Ukraine. A St Petersburg court found Fr Aleksandr Khmelyov guilty of “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces in a sermon he gave over three years ago and posted on his church’s YouTube channel. Fr Aleksandr left Russia on 11 July 2025, the same day as the closed court hearing, after Telegram channels thought to be linked to state security services claimed that investigators were preparing further administrative and criminal cases against him.

Fr Aleksandr founded the Mother of Solidarity community in 2017 for LGBT+ Christians. He has frequently faced administrative prosecution over the last decade for his participation in rallies supporting the LGBT+ community and political prisoners. He has also faced prosecution for protests against the Russian occupation of Crimea, and latterly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Justice Ministry added him to its register of “foreign agents” on 20 June 2025, shortly after police drew up the protocol of his alleged “discreditation” offence (see below).

The security-service-linked Telegram channels suggested that Fr Aleksandr could be prosecuted for “creation of an extremist community” (Criminal Code Article 282.1) and “LGBT propaganda” (Administrative Code Article 6.21) (see below).

Fr Aleksandr’s lawyer plans to appeal against his conviction under Administrative Code Article 20.3.3, Part 1 (“Public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”) on his behalf. It is unknown whether police or other investigative agencies will pursue any other charges now that he is outside the country (see below).

Darya Lebedeva of the St Petersburg court system’s press service told Forum 18 that Fr Aleksandr was fined for an offence which had not existed when he allegedly committed it because the video remained accessible online after the new offence of “discrediting” the Armed Forces was signed into law (see below).

Lebedeva ignored Forum 18’s questions about why Fr Aleksandr’s actions were considered “discreditation” of the Armed Forces, but said that the court decision would not be made publicly available (see below).

Criminal trials of anti-war figures continue

The first two full hearings in the trial of Protestant pastor Nikolay Romanyuk took place on 28 and 29 July at Balashikha District Court in Moscow Region. The next is due to be held on 4 August, his daughter Svetlana Zhukova noted on her Telegram channel.

Pastor Romanyuk stands accused of “Public calls to implement activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation, or to obstruct the exercise by government bodies and their officials of their powers to ensure the security of the Russian Federation with the use of mass media, or electronic, or information and telecommunication networks, including the internet” (Article 280.4, Part 2, Paragraph v), for calling on believers not to go and fight in Ukraine. 

Moscow’s Preobrazhensky District Court sentenced Buddhist leader Ilya Vasilyev to 8 years’ imprisonment on 25 June. He remains in detention in the capital’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

The judge convicted Vasilyev of “Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, for reasons of political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred or enmity, or for reasons of hatred or enmity against any social group” (Criminal Code Article 207.3, Part 2, Paragraph e) for a Facebook post about a Russian rocket attack on Kherson.

The judge has only just provided copies of the verdict to the defence and prosecution, 
Vasilyev’s lawyer Gevorg Aleksanyan told Forum 18 on 29 July, “so we are now preparing the appeal”.

Independent Christian preacher Eduard Charov made his fourth appearance at Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg on 25 July. He faces charges of “Public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” more than once in a year (Criminal Code Article 280.3, Part 1) and “Public calls to commit terrorist activities, public justification of terrorism or propaganda of terrorism, using the internet” (Criminal Code Article 205.2, Part 2). It is unknown when his next hearing will take place.

Charges and punishments

Soon after Russia launched its renewed invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin introduced new offences in order to prosecute those opposing the war for any reason, including on religious grounds.

These included – but were not limited to – Administrative Code Article 20.3.3 and the associated Criminal Code Article 280.3 introduced on 4 March 2022 to punish alleged “discreditation” of the Armed Forces. Amendments to the law on 25 March 2022 expanded the definition of this offence to include “discreditation” of “the execution by state bodies of the Russian Federation of their powers for the specified purposes”, ie. protecting Russian interests and “maintaining international peace and security”.

The government has used a range of tactics to pressure religious leaders into supporting the renewed invasion of Ukraine. These tactics include warnings to senior and local religious leaders, and prosecuting and fining religious believers and clergy who have publicly opposed the war. Similar warnings and prosecutions have been used against many Russians who express opposition to the war for any reason.

Fined for anti-war sermon

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Khmelyov is an Old Catholic priest and leader of the LGBT+ friendly Mother of Solidarity community. On 11 July 2025, St Petersburg’s Lenin District Court found him guilty of “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces in an anti-war sermon he had given more than three years earlier. Judge Yelena Samsonova fined him 30,000 Roubles under Administrative Code Article 20.3.3, Part 1. This represents more than a week’s average local wage.

Fr Aleksandr intends to appeal through his lawyer as soon as the latter has received the court’s written decision, he told Forum 18 from outside Russia on 22 July. 

Police had found the video of the sermon on the Mother of Solidarity YouTube channel, on which the church streamed and uploaded its services, Fr Aleksandr explained to Forum 18. On Sunday 27 February 2022, he was released from detention for allegedly violating St Petersburg’s coronavirus restrictions by attending a protest against Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (a common punishment for protesters at the time and even now). At that day’s service, he preached on the Parable of the Mote and the Beam from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus says “Why do you see the speck [mote] in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log [beam] in your own eye?”

“I don’t know where Putin saw a speck there in Ukraine, but unfortunately, now we don’t see specks in Ukraine, but rather unexploded shells sticking out of the asphalt on the road,” Fr Aleksandr said in his sermon. “But the most important thing is that it’s unclear why Russian soldiers are shooting women and children.”

It is unclear whether police included any other material in their evidence against Fr Aleksandr, since, according to human rights media outlet Slovo Zashchite’s 26 July account of the case, he also criticised the war in subsequent worship services. It was the 27 February 2022 video, however, which was played before the judge at the hearing on 11 July, Slovo Zashchite noted. Almost all videos have now been deleted from the Mother of Solidarity YouTube channel.

(Russia’s censorship body Roskomnadzor blocked access to Slovo Zashchite’s website in February 2025.)

Forum 18 asked the St Petersburg court system’s press service on 28 July why the judge had found Fr Aleksandr guilty of an offence which had not existed when he allegedly committed it (Administrative Code Article 20.3.3 was adopted on 4 March 2022). Press service director Darya Lebedeva explained that this was because the video remained accessible online after the new offence of “discrediting” the Armed Forces was signed into law.

Lebedeva ignored Forum 18’s questions about why Fr Aleksandr’s actions were considered “discreditation” of the Armed Forces, but said that the court decision would not be made publicly available.

Leaving Russia amid threat of further prosecution

Fr Aleksandr’s 11 July court hearing was closed – at the request of the defence, according to court spokesperson Lebedeva. Despite this, a number of Telegram channels obtained details almost immediately, including some believed to be connected to Russian security and police bodies, human rights monitor OVD-Info noted the same day.

Mash na Moyke and Operativniye Svodki both claimed on 11 July that “According to our information, the question of initiating several criminal and administrative cases against the LGBT activist is being considered: for creating an extremist community and public propaganda of non-traditional ideology”.

Mash na Moyke also accuses Fr Aleksandr of having “convinced his ‘parishioners’ to adhere to extremist views and support the Ukrainian authorities”. Both channels note that Fr Aleksandr performs marriages for LGBT+ people and supports female ordination, and imply that he is not a real priest.

On seeing the posts, “I was outraged, of course”, Fr Aleksandr told the Current Time news website on 16 July. “But then my lawyer, to whom I showed it, and I realised that the point was not so much in the tone, but in [the message] at the end that, according to their information, criminal and administrative cases were being prepared against me. After which it was decided that it was necessary to pack up and leave.”

Fr Aleksandr’s lawyer, Vladimir Vasilenko, confirmed on his Telegram channel on 12 July that his client had left Russia after “threats of persecution by the security services from anonymous Telegram channels”, and “is now safe”.

“Since the channels which wrote about administrative and criminal cases being prepared against me are connected to the security services [siloviki], it would be stupid to deny that this is a direct warning,” Fr Aleksandr told Forum 18 on 23 July. He added that his ministry in St Petersburg “has been transferred to another person, and I will organise everything from scratch in another country”.

Two possible charges

The two charges Fr Aleksandr might have faced had he remained in Russia appear to be Criminal Code Article 282.1, Part 1 (“The creation of an extremist community, that is, an organised group of persons for the preparation or commission of crimes of an extremist nature”) and Administrative Code Article 6.21 (“Propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences, gender reassignment, refusal to have children”).

Criminal Code Article 282.1n Part 1 carries the following possible punishments: a fine of 400,000 to 800,000 Roubles, or 6 to 10 years’ imprisonment plus 1 to 2 years’ restrictions on freedom and “deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities” for up to 10 years.

Administrative Code Article 6.21 has eight Parts covering various permutations of the offence. Fr Aleksandr would likely have been charged under Part 1 (“propaganda” by a Russian citizen, not among minors, without use of the internet), which carries a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Roubles for individuals or 100,000 to 200,000 Roubles for persons in an official position (800,000 to 1 million Roubles or 90 days’ suspension of activities for legal entities) – or Part 3 (“propaganda” with use of the internet), which carries a fine of 100,000 to 200,000 Roubles for individuals or 200,000 to 400,000 Roubles for persons in an official position (1 million to 4 million Roubles or 90 days’ suspension of activities for legal entities).

In November 2024 in Moscow, a Russian member of the Scottish Episcopal Church was fined under Administrative Code Article 6.21, Part 3 for social media posts about Anglican and Catholic views of homosexuality, and praising the appointment to an Edinburgh church of a priest who had married his same-sex partner as soon as the Scottish Episcopal Church adopted equal marriage in 2017. 

Administrative Code Article 6.21 (commonly known as the “gay propaganda” law) was introduced on 30 June 2013 and was originally aimed at allegedly “protecting minors from propaganda of homosexualism”.

Amendments of 5 December 2022 broadened Article 6.21’s scope to “Propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences or gender reassignment” (moving “propaganda” among minors to a separate Part 2). The possible punishments also greatly increased. On 23 November 2024, the Article was amended yet again to include “propaganda of refusing to have children”.

On 30 November 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld the Justice Ministry’s request to have the so-called “international social movement LGBT” banned as “extremist”, thus making anyone considered to be “continuing its activities” liable to prosecution under Criminal Code Article 282.2, and rendering the rainbow flag an “extremist” symbol, the display of which can incur charges under Administrative Article 20.3.

“Foreign agent”

The Justice Ministry added Fr Aleksandr to the register of “foreign agents” on 20 June 2025, about a week after police drew up the protocol against him under Administrative Code Article 20.3.3 (“Public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”).

The Justice Ministry declared in a press release (blocked outside Russia): “A. V. Khmelyov participated in the creation of messages and materials of a foreign agent for an unlimited number of people, [and] distributed messages and materials of foreign agents, as well as organisations included in the list of foreign and international organisations whose activities are recognised as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation, to an unlimited number of people. He disseminated false information about decisions made by public authorities of the Russian Federation and the policies they pursue.”

Fr Aleksandr is among at least nine religious leaders and activists known to have been placed on the “foreign agents” register.

Russia has used increasingly strict legislation on “foreign agents” (a term which has connotations of spying) and “undesirable organisations” to curtail, complicate, or prohibit the activities of organisations which promote human rights and monitor their violation, including that of freedom of religion and belief.

Background

)Fr Aleksandr Khmelyov founded the Mother of Solidarity Congregation, now renamed Mother of the Unbroken, in St Petersburg in 2017. The community describes itself as Old Catholic and as being “under the jurisdiction of the Association of Christian Eucharistic Communities within the Celtic Church of Germany”.

The Old Catholic Church began in the Netherlands with those Catholics who were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church over their rejection of papal infallibility after the First Vatican Council in 1870. They later pursued a position of full communion with the Anglican and Swedish Lutheran Churches, optional clerical celibacy (from 1874), the ordination of women (from 1994), and equal marriage (from 2020).

The Association of Christian Eucharistic Communities was founded in 2014 as an “alternative Orthodox movement”. It is unregistered in Russia. According to its website, it follows a “radically ecumenical and liberal doctrine, forming our Church as a free union of self-governing communities”.

In its founding document of 2015, quoted on the Mother of Solidarity website, the ACEC states that it is “open to prayerful and Eucharistic communion with representatives of other Christian churches”, that “we believe that no one in Christ can be excluded, oppressed or have privileges on the basis of their origin, social status, race, gender or sexual orientation”, and that “We respect any manifestation of love between people as a great gift from God and reject the interference of other people in personal life, especially under the guise of religion”. It accepts the ordination of women and both married and celibate clergy.

Fr Aleksandr grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), but in 2012 joined the True Orthodox Church, in which he was ordained as a deacon and then a priest. After he came out as gay, he joined the Association of Christian Eucharistic Communities in 2015 and moved to St Petersburg, where he initially led worship for LGBT+ Christians at Nuntiare et Recreare, a multi-faith group which provided support and resources for LGBT+ believers (Roskomnadzor blocked its website in 2022). Fr Aleksandr then founded his own community.

“LGBT people often suffer from religious fundamentalism. In various religious associations, they are offered nothing but practices for healing from ‘homosexualism’ – that’s what they call homosexuality”, he commented to Radio Liberty in 2023. “LGBT people with Christian views have nowhere to go. They are sure that any Church hates them. I think that’s why it’s important for LGBT people in a homophobic country to have a Christian religious community that accepts them and is willing to support them.”

Until he left Russia, Fr Aleksandr worked as a nurse with dementia patients. He regularly participated in Pride marches(up to 2017), the March Against Hatred (which called attention to neo-Nazism and racist violence), and protests in support of the LGBT+ community and political prisoners, against the occupation of Crimea, and calling for the repeal of the Criminal Code Article 148, which punishes “insulting the feelings of believers”. For this, he faced prosecution several times under Administrative Code Article 20.2 (Violation of the Demonstrations Law).

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Forum 18 believes that religious freedom is a fundamental human right, which is essential for the dignity of humanity and for true freedom.

Why Classical-Liberal Constitutionalism Has Failed – OpEd

 July 31, 2025  

By MISES

By Ryan McMaken

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the party of laissez-faire and free markets—known today as “classical liberals”—often pushed a political program that included the adoption of written constitutions. The old liberals—such as the American revolutionaries and French bourgeois reformers—thought that written constitutions would offer a substantial barrier to abuses of state power.

The constitutional program of the classical liberals is not to be confused with its underlying ideology—what is today generally called “libertarianism.” Nonetheless, constitutionalism has been an important tactic favored by liberals/libertarians historically. That is, it was thought that written constitutions, as a means, would ensure liberal ends. The ideology of the classical liberals favored minimizing state power so that the non-state institutions—known as “society”—could grow and flourish free of state intervention. 

Unfortunately, written constitutions have failed to achieve this goal. Throughout the new liberal states that arose from the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century, central governments grew rapidly to achieve powers that would have been thought unthinkable even under the old monarchical regimes of Europe. 

The liberals’ constitutional reforms failed to prevent rising taxation, growing bureaucracy, and military conscription within the national states that had ostensibly adopted liberal constitutions. This liberal project failed because the it embraced the idea that it was desirable to centralize and consolidate power within a single national state apparatus. Under most circumstances, this sort of centralization of power was considered by most to be a recipe for more powerful states. But, the liberals rather naïvely thought that the powers of these new, centralized “liberal” states would be limited and controlled through their written constitutions.

It didn’t work out that way. What happened instead was that the consolidation of state power within new, uniform, and national “constitutional” frameworks enabled states to overcome and abolish the older decentralized power structures that had previously impeded the state power.

After all, the liberal project assumed it was necessary to abolish all the old intermediating institutions of the old regimes, which had, admittedly, imposed their own limitations on the freedoms of residents. It turned out, however, that these institutions had also served to hobble the freedoms and powers of the central state. As Jörg Guido Hülsmann has pointed out, the constitutional program at first paved the way for liberal reforms. Yet, if ideological fashions change, the newly empowered “liberal” state quickly finds it now faces fewer real impediments to its power. Hülsmann writes:

[A]fter the zeal of the [liberal] reformers has ebbed away, nothing stands in the way of a further expansion of the state’s monopoly powers in other areas such as welfare, art, economy, etc. …

In the worst of all cases, and unfortunately these cases happen to be the majority, the [liberal] reforms are brought about by the creation of additional hegemonic bonds with a more encompassing political agency (centralization). To get rid of aristocratic privileges, the classical liberals first supported the king against the lesser aristocrats, and then concentrated further powers in the democratic central state to fight all regional and local forms of monarchism and aristocracy. Rather than curbing political power, they merely shifted and centralized it, creating even more powerful political institutions than those they were trying to supersede. The classical liberals thus bought their short-run successes with very burdensome long-run annuities, some of which we have paid in the twentieth century.

This is the reason why classical liberalism ultimately failed. It is important to realize that the quick successes of the classical liberals are not unrelated to the totalitarian schemes that plagued the past century. The fundamental fact is that the liberal reforms were not spontaneously adopted by the various local constituencies, but were imposed on them. It is true that this “technique” was very effective in realizing the classical-liberal program all at once in the whole territory controlled by the new democratic central state. Without it, this process would have been gradual, and it would have implied that islands of the Ancien Régime would have survived for a very long time. Yet like all mere techniques, this was a two-edged sword that would eventually be turned against life, liberty, and property.

Some of the more clever French liberals saw the mistake almost immediately. Historian Ralph Raico notes that once the old regime was swept away, the problem of the modern centralized state came into view. He writes:

The focus of all threats to individual freedom became the government itself. The Church, nobility, guilds and other corporations that, endowed with coercive privilege, had vexed the free functioning of men, left the stage, and across the gap created by their disappearance the individual and the state, for the first time, stood alone facing each other.

And now the liberals’ attitude toward the state underwent a change. Where previous French liberals had seen [in the state] a potential instrument for the establishment of liberty, and one that might at times even safely be used for the realization of certain “philosophical” values, writers like [influential French liberal Benjamin] Constant started to see a collection of standing threats to individual freedom: government is “the natural enemy of liberty;” ministers, of whatever party, are, by nature, “the eternal adversaries of freedom of the press;” governments will always look on war as “a means of increasing their authority.” Thus, with Constant, the chief articulator of his generation’s liberal ideals, we see the beginnings of classical liberalism’s “state hatred,” which, after the 18th century’s ambiguous attitude, marks its theory to the present day…”

Thus, what had begun as a naïve faith in the potential of centralized, liberal constitutions quickly become an acute awareness of danger of state power, regardless of its written constitution.

But much of damage had already been done. The attempt to switch over to a liberal-oriented polity via a stronger centralized state led to consolidated national states which quickly set to work undermining liberal gains. In the United States, for example, which perhaps, among national states implemented the most liberal national constitution, the situation almost immediately began to unravel. The initial highly liberal constitution was soon replaced by one that was much more centralist. Then, the supporters of more consolidated national power set to work centralizing power even more.

Raico writes that the Bill of Rights:

was a heroic attempt to limit government, but very quickly the Hamiltonian and then the Whig tradition arose in America to expand the powers of the national government. Very quickly also, the national government’s own Supreme Court set itself up as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution and interpreter of the Constitution. That’s very dangerous. What could be a protection against this? What could be a protection against a national government doing all kinds of things in the economy—protective tariffs, so-called internal improvements, pork for their contractor friends in the railroads, and printing money—that it forces on the people? What could prevent the federal government from doing that? ….

Now there seems to be no limit—no institutional limit, no theoretical limit—to what the national government can do. You say, “Well, we still have the Bill of Rights.” Well, we have the Bill of Rights, but the Bill of Rights has to be interpreted. It’s interpreted by the federal Supreme Court.

That is, once the federal courts agree with the anti-liberal forces promoting centralization, then there is no amount of centralization and state growth that will be deemed “illegal” or contrary to the constitution. This is because “legal” solutions to despotism such as written constitutions do not suffice to constrain state power. This process took longer in the United States than in many of the other national states built around liberal constitutions. But the end result was similar in all cases. Benjamin Constant, for instance, understood that:

All the constitutions which have been given to France have equally accorded individual liberty, and under the empire of these constitutions, individual liberty has been ceaselessly violated. The point is that a simple declaration does not suffice. What is required are positive safeguards; what is required are bodies powerful enough to employ in favor of the oppressed the means of defense sanctioned by the law.”

Realistically, however, these “positive safeguards” cannot be within the central government itself. That is, no “supreme court” or similar institution, if it is an extension of the central government itself, could be expected to act as a limiting factor on the very institutions the supreme court serves.

Many liberals nonetheless have sought solutions in contrivances that supposedly create “checks and balances” within the central government. This, however, has long been a common characteristic of the liberal constitutions that have to thoroughly failed to limit the powers of the state.

Rather, the only durable and realistic solution lies in dismantling the consolidated, constitutional state that the liberals erected. If our modern, overpowered states are the result of enfeebling local, independent institutions of the old regime, then the means of weakening the state lies in empowering similar institutions as a counterbalance to the national state. These independent institutions, motivated to protect their own prerogatives from the central state, will then be important allies in dismantling the state and undoing the centralizing process embraced by the early liberals.

In his own work on countering state power, Raico concludes that the response to the failure of the liberal constitutions is to deconstruct the state itself, largely through radical decentralization and secession:

So, what to do? Ever since I translated Mises’s Liberalism many years ago, and even before that, I’ve been interested in the history of classical liberalism, and most of my research has been concerned with that. I’m coming to a conclusion—which I held theoretically but feel more strongly about and hold, you might say practically, now—that there is no answer within classical liberalism. The liberals had no answer because they strove to preserve the state. I say, “held this view theoretically,” because I agree with Murray Rothbard, my old friend, that ultimately the kind of system we want is a system where individuals are empowered to select their own means of defense—their own, let’s say, defense agencies and their own courts, just as they select any other service of theirs. So, I held that theoretical view for a long time, but now, what I’m telling you is that it’s very clear that there is no way of salvaging “limited government.” It’s simply going to be getting worse and worse, so our more direct and immediate aim has to be to destroy the centralized state, to do away with the centralized state in stages.

Specifically, Raico points to secession as the means of reversing the process of centralizing political power within national states. In, this, of course, he follows many classical liberals—i.e., Gustave de Molinari, Charles Dunoyer, Thomas Jefferson, and John Locke— who did not follow the centralist liberal strain that was, unfortunately, so common and so successful.

It is important to note that when Raico says there is “no answer within classical liberalism” he is referring to the means, not the goals. Raico never wavered from his ideological liberalism in favor of the weakening of states and the undermining of state power. Raico is correct to conclude, though, that the old liberal political tactics of constitutionalism, state building, and universal suffrage—have clearly failed. 

• About the author: Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is executive editor at the Mises Institute, a former economist for the State of Colorado, and the author of two books: Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. He is also the editor of The Struggle for Liberty: A Libertarian History of Political Thought. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy, finance, and international relations from the University of Colorado. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. 
• Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute\

MISES

The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace. The liberal intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) guides us. Accordingly, the Mises Institute seeks a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order. The Mises Institute encourages critical historical research, and stands against political correctness.

 

By Taking On Government Roles, Terrorists

GUERRILA MOVEMENTS Tighten Grip On Sahel’s Rural Areas

 July 31, 2025

By Africa Defense Forum

Across the vast expanses of rural Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, residents feel little influence from their central governments. That void has opened the way for the terrorist group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin to spread its own influence by fulfilling local security needs while imposing strict Islamic law known as Shariah.

The organization, also known as JNIM, is an umbrella group comprising four insurgent groups aligned with al-Qaida. Since taking shape in Mali in 2017, JNIM has spread to Burkina Faso and Niger. Along the way, the organization has worked to recruit members of marginalized groups such as Fulani herders and Tuareg separatists in areas that have been largely ignored by national governments.

“JNIM’s strategy merges ideology with pragmatism, adapting to local realities and working through traditional and religious leaders to entrench itself in community structures,” analyst Anoushka Varma of the Soufan Center told ADF in an email.

JNIM offers basic services, security guarantees, and limited dispute resolution through Shari’a-based courts, schools, and informal goldmines.

 “However, this service provision is sporadic, inconsistent, and not a clear-cut replacement for the functions of a functioning state. It is primarily coercive and transactional,” Varma wrote.

JNIM’s leader, Iyad Ag Ghali, is an ethnic Tuareg and a former Malian diplomat who led the 2012 uprising that sought to turn northern Mali into a separate Tuareg state called Azawad. JNIM’s deputy leader, Amadou Koufa, is an ethnic Fulani.

JNIM uses different methods to gain influence over local communities. One method uses propaganda videos to show the governments’ attacks, frequently aided by Russian mercenaries, on local communities. Subsequent videos show JNIM fighters distributing food and other resources to those communities. JNIM later launched retaliatory attacks on government forces in the names of those communities.

JNIM followed that script in March after denouncing a government attack near the community of Solenzo in western Burkina Faso that killed 130 Fulani residents. In retaliation, JNIM attacked a military camp in Diapaga and killed more than 30 Soldiers and volunteer fighters.

However, JNIM also uses blockades and sieges to control some communities.

“Local populations are often open to some compromise with JNIM because the state was unable to protect them,” Liam Karr, an analyst for the Institute for the Study of War, told Arab Weekly. “These deals lead JNIM to lift sieges, cease attacks or agree to protect populations, which helps bring a return to normalcy and peace.”

Communities that submit to JNIM rule gain a semblance of peace in exchange for Taliban-like restrictions on society, according to Varma. Men are forced to grow beards. Women are banned from public spaces. Music is forbidden. JNIM imposes its own levies on the communities to support its operations, but fighters also steal cattle to finance themselves.“These practices are clearly breaking from established practices and certainly not very popular,” Yvan Guichaoua, a senior researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, recently told the BBC. “But whether it’s attractive or not, also depends on what the state is able to deliver, and there has been a lot of disappointment in what the state has been doing for the past years.”

The coups that toppled the democratically elected governments in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger  between 2021 and 2023 were rooted partly in frustration with the governments’ inability to rein in JNIM and other insurgent groups. Since those coups, attacks by JNIM and other groups have increased. JNIM now operates throughout Mali, in 11 of Burkina Faso’s 13 provinces, and in several provinces of western Niger. Escalating violence has earned the three Sahel nations the distinction of being the global epicenter for terrorism for the past two years.

As JNIM remains most powerful in rural areas and small villages, it appears to be shifting its strategy toward attacks on cities. In early July, JNIM launched seven simultaneous attacks that included cities in western Mali near the borders with Senegal and Mauritania. Government forces ultimately repelled those attacks, but they suggested a shift toward JNIM taking on larger targets. However, the group lacks the manpower to conquer a large city, according to experts.

Even as JNIM attacks cities, the balance of power with the government is largely unchanged, according to Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, deputy project director for the Sahel at the International Crisis Group.

“The parties are fighting a war of attrition, with jihadist groups expanding in rural areas, and government forces and their Russian allies controlling urban centers,” Ibrahim wrote. “JNIM’s recent calls for Malians to mobilize against Bamako [the government] and its Russian supporters suggests that the group may be trying to encourage the regime’s collapse from within.”

Africa Defense Forum

The Africa Defense Forum (ADF) magazine is a security affairs journal that focuses on all issues affecting peace, stability, and good governance in Africa. ADF is published by the U.S. Africa Command.