For me, it's too early for any bold claims but I don't see it going away quietly. It's weird, the mercenary wars of the 60's and 80's - some of them were rather silly proxy wars between USSR and USA (Nigeria was a total mess), but lots of them were USSR backing great communist leaders like Lumumba who had the peoples support.

In this case though - the coup is originally anti France, anti colonial, it goes forward, and then they decide to brazenly wave the flag of the West's greatest enemy (Russia). It's not like there's much of a material gain for the actual lower class people in Niger in getting Russia involved (unlike in the 60's-80's). It's just the top brass, companies, and governments of the coup's leaders that will get a fat payout and continued guns n armour. What guns and armour does Russia even have to trade with at this point though? They're already at war.

What the fuck is going on? Is it too stupid to say that the top dogs in Niger are now deliberately inviting a war against the West? Is it that they thought war was already going to happen, so they're getting all the backing they can to try to scare the French from striking back?

Could this end in an absolute NATO 'peacekeeper' goatfuck?