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Niamey, Niger – The failed mutiny in Niger has shown the extent to which President Abdourahamane Tiani now relies on Russian support when his government comes under threat, including from within his own security forces.

On August 29, soldiers calling themselves the Armed Forces for the Restoration of the Homeland attacked Air Base 101 at Niamey’s international airport, the presidential palace and the national broadcaster in a coordinated assault. A statement circulated during the fighting falsely declared that Tchiani had been removed.

Loyalist presidential guard units held the palace overnight, while about 200 Russian Africa Corps soldiers, backed by drones and reportedly reinforced from Mali and Libya, helped retake the airbase by evening. At least 27 people were killed, and about 100 mutineers were arrested.

The mutiny showed who Tchiani could rely on when his own security forces turned against him. Nigerien troops held the presidential palace, while Russian personnel and equipment helped loyalist forces retake the key airbase.

A fractured army

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ryan Cummings, head analyst at Signal Risk, said the attempted mutiny was rooted in grievances that had been building inside the military.

“The insurrection indicates discord within the Nigerien armed forces,” he said. “This stems from multiple sources. The foremost pertains to significant casualties being inflicted against the country’s military by an array of non-state armed actors which appear to be as well equipped, if not better, than their military counterparts.”

Cummings pointed to a widening gap between soldiers fighting on the front lines and those protecting the country’s political leadership.

“Other factors include discrepancies in deployment and remuneration between low- to middle-ranking officers, who led the attempted mutiny and putsch, versus their more senior counterparts, such as the presidential guard who thwarted the coup attempt,” he said.

“Junior to middle-ranking soldiers are generally deployed to conflict front lines, where they face well-equipped and increasingly professional militant units that are capable of overrunning their positions,” Cummings noted. “Conversely, more senior military units, most notably the presidential guard, are deployed to garrisoned cities such as Niamey and Agadez, where the threat of engagement is generally lower. Despite facing a lower risk profile, senior military units generally enjoy significantly higher remuneration than their low- to middle-rank counterparts.”

The mutiny exposed the gap between soldiers fighting on the front lines and those serving in better-protected units in the capital.

Russia’s role grows

Tchiani expelled French and American troops in 2023 and 2024, and troops from Russia’s Africa Corps entered Niger as the military government sought to replace Western support.

But the mutiny showed that Moscow’s role now goes beyond helping Niger fight armed groups.

When soldiers inside Niger’s own military threatened the government, Russian personnel and equipment helped loyalist forces retake Air Base 101. The episode showed that Russia’s role in Niger now extends beyond the fight against armed groups to helping protect the military government itself.

That is a significant shift from how the partnership was initially presented to Nigeriens: as a way to strengthen the fight against armed groups after the departure of Western forces.

For Tchiani, that reliance on Moscow comes as he faces continued attacks by armed groups and growing discontent among soldiers fighting them.

A test for the AES alliance

The response from Niger’s fellow military leaders also raised questions about how much help the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) can provide when one of its members is under serious pressure.

According to Romane Dideberg, a research analyst at Chatham House’s Africa Programme, the response was one of the most revealing aspects of the rebellion.

“What the security response says about the cohesion of the Alliance of Sahel States might be one of the most telling elements of the mutiny,” she said. “As with the April attacks in Mali, the two other Sahelian juntas remained largely unreactive during this existential moment for the Nigerien junta, reacting only once the mutiny was neutralised.”

“This partly reflects the operational shortcomings of the confederation’s security architecture, but also, more critically, the sensitive relations between Tchiani’s junta and his Malian and Burkinabe counterparts,” she said.

Dideberg said Tchiani was rumoured not to have reached out to Mali. She also pointed to a generational and cultural gap between Tchiani and his Sahelian allies, saying his government showed more continuity with the former establishment while a different rationale had underpinned the coup that brought him to power.

The mutiny tested how far the three miltary governments were prepared, and able, to come to one another’s aid.

The UAE allegations

Alongside the Russian role, allegations have emerged that French and Emirati interests were connected to the mutiny, amid wider friction over Niger’s Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline project.

The allegations have not been independently substantiated.

Roger Gabriel, a Nigerien army captain and commander of the elite 1st Parachute Battalion, appeared on state television on September 4 and alleged that several people, including associates of deposed President Mohamed Bazoum and officers from Chad, Benin and the Ivory Coast, were behind the attack.

He also said people from the United Arab Emirates had called and urged him to join the mutiny.

The claims are difficult to independently verify, but they have put fresh attention on the UAE’s growing presence in the Sahel.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Hossamaldeen Ibrahim, an Africa analyst at the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute (BISI), said the possibility of Emirati involvement “cannot be dismissed” given the information circulating and the UAE’s broader regional activity.

“The UAE has been expanding its influence across the Sahel, from the western states to Sudan, primarily through official partnerships with military regimes, but also via informal networks, resource extraction, notably gold, and ties to non-state actors including separatist groups when needed,” he said.

“Its approach is pragmatic and dual-track: it prioritises formal state-level relations first, then pivots to alternative channels if the official path falters,” Ibrahim said.

“All of this is deeply political and strategic, interlinked with ambitions to secure leverage over Mediterranean and Red Sea routes. The growing friction with Algeria underscores how these moves are widely read in the region as an effort to reshape the balance of influence, making any allegations around the recent events in Niger worth careful scrutiny rather than either exaggeration or dismissal,” he said.

For now, the allegations remain allegations.

Tchiani survived the mutiny, but the failed attempt to remove him exposed strains inside his military, highlighted his growing reliance on Russia, and raised questions about how much help his closest regional allies can provide when he needs it.

For Dideberg, the implications go beyond the failed attempt to unseat Tchiani.

“This mutiny calls the effectiveness, but also, to an extent, the sincerity, of the mutual assistance pact into question,” she said.

Upon arrival at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, Infantino remained tightlipped on his re-election as FIFA president.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino is staying mum on the leadership challenge he faces as a result of his failed plan to sell rights to private investors in the World Cup, and he declined to answer questions about his re-election upon arrival at the Under-20 Women’s World Cup in Poland.

Infantino, who faces continuing pressure and the prospect of a criminal case, was in the stands speaking with Polish football federation president Cezary Kulesza as hosts Poland faced Argentina on the opening day of the tournament on Saturday.

However, when he arrived at the Arena Katowice, the 56-year-old avoided questions about his future at the global governing body for football.

“There will be a lot to say, but there will be a right place and a right time to say this. It’s not today, it’s not here, but here and today, we are enjoying football,” Infantino told British broadcaster Sky News outside the venue.

“We are continuing at FIFA, of course, to work to give every corner of the world a chance, an opportunity, a dignity, to find ways and means for them to become better and to participate and to celebrate football, which we all love.”

Infantino did not answer when asked if he had considered resigning or whether he still intends to stand for a fourth term next year.

Infantino had mostly kept out of the spotlight in the weeks since his World Cup sell-off plan fell apart amid opposition from many FIFA member nations and some of his own officials.

The European nations — a quarter of the 24-team field — backed down on a boycott threat last week, citing assurances from FIFA that the plan would not be revived.

Legal action over the original attempt continues, and Europe has a leading role in efforts to oust Infantino ahead of next year’s FIFA election.

A court filing by FIFA on Thursday accused UEFA of running a “smear campaign against FIFA and its leadership” as the European football body seeks discovery of evidence related to the FIFA Forward Enterprise plan.

Infantino infuriated football leaders worldwide in July, shortly after the World Cup ended, when his plan for a $20bn subsidiary controlling FIFA commercial rights, including the World Cup, was revealed by British daily The Times.

The spinoff was to be 20 percent owned by investors led by a New York fund created by Joshua Kushner, whose initial money was to pay offers of $20m to each of FIFA’s 211 member federations. They were given a mid-September deadline to accept.

The FIFA president dropped his proposal within four days. UEFA had support from the Asian Football Confederation and North American football body CONCACAF, and there was criticism of the plan and of Infantino from senior FIFA officials.

Mark Walter doesn’t need to sell the Sparks. It said so in a release from his company Wednesday: “TWG is not looking to sell its sports assets at ‘fire sale’ prices to raise capital for its insurance operations.”

He should sell the Sparks anyway.

Not because of the investigations into allegations that insurance companies under Walter’s umbrella failed to properly disclose and conduct transactions between other companies he controls.

But for the sake of the storied WNBA franchise, which hasn’t won a championship in a decade and is about to miss the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season — something that would have been unthinkable six seasons ago.

Sell for the sake of the Sparks, who have long deserved an owner who wants seriously to run the team like Walter’s group runs, well, the Dodgers.

With passion and pride, foresight and smarts.

A steel beam is raised as the final structuarl piece of the Sparks’ $150-million training facility in El Segundo on Wednesday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

And, yes, the new $150-million training facility that’s going to open in El Segundo next year is a better-late-than-never step in that direction.

It’s not too little; the 64,000-square-foot space, which will be tremendous in a prime location near the beach and shopping.

But it’s very late. Wednesday’s topping-out ceremony, when a construction crew lifted the final structural beam into place, doesn’t change that.

While so many of the Sparks’ rivals have had the upper hand in recruiting and retaining talent with state-of-the-art private practice spaces for the past few years, the Sparks have been — to use star forward Nneka Ogwumike’s word — “nomads.”

The Sparks have always offered fans a famously fun game-day experience, but their players had to continually get familiar with facilities all over Southern California, from L.A. Southwest and El Camino College to Academy USA in Glendale to Jump Beyond Sports in Torrance, from Windward School and Galen Center to JR286, the gym in Torrance where they practice now.

Starting next season, they’ll have a home.

A rendering of the Sparks’ new training facility in El Segundo.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

But it’s not because the Sparks’ ownership wanted to do what Mark Davis did with the Las Vegas Aces when he was the first owner to provide fancy new digs in 2023.

Not because they were resolute about giving the Sparks a first-class experience, like Joe Tsai did when he chartered flights for New York Liberty before the league said it was legal, getting himself fined $500,000.

But because the Sparks would fall further behind if they didn’t.

Because now “it’s the bare minimum,” said forward Dearica Hamby, whose input — dedicated spaces for family and naps — was incorporated into the building’s design.

It also will include two regulation basketball courts, a performance and training environment, hydrotherapy and recovery rooms and a player sanctuary.

“It represents a belief in our players,” said Stacy Johns, the team’s president. “It represents a belief in the future of the Sparks. And it represents a belief in where women’s basketball and women’s sports are going.”

Members of the media and guests gather with the Sparks’ front-office staff for the topping-out ceremony in El Segundo on Wednesday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

Where’s that? Up.

Valuations are growing. In May, CNBC reported that the WNBA’s current teams were worth an average of $460 million — 84% more than the league’s most recent expansion fee of $250 million.

The Sparks — without taking the new facility, the largest investment to date in the history of women’s sports, into account — were valued at $415 million, seventh among the WNBA’s 15 teams.

The Golden State Valkyries, an expansion team in 2025, were valued at a record $1 billion, more than any women’s sports team in history.

That’s because the Valkyries — who are owned by the Golden State Warriors’ Joe Lacob and Peter Guber — have been innovative and imaginative, run more like the Dodgers than the Sparks, who are owned mostly by the same folks as the Dodgers.

The Dodgers instituted a private player-only plane and added Japanese-style toilets after then-recruit Roki Sasaki asked. The Valkyries established a 30-plus network of area bars for fans to gather to watch games and they helped a player with sleeping problems by offering everything from a different comforter to a sleep study.

Rendering of the inside the contrition of the Sparks’ new training facility, including a dining area.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers gave the keys to Andrew Friedman and Dave Roberts. The Valkyries’ GM is Ohemaa Nyanin, formerly an assistant GM with the WNBA champion New York Liberty, and their coach is former UCLA Bruin Natalie Nakase, before an assistant on Aces championship teams and an NBA assistant for years with the Clippers.

The Sparks have for the past several seasons cycled through unproven coaches and GMs, or fired experienced ones. Unable to pick a lane and drive it, they keep ricocheting between preaching patience and acting impatiently. And at the moment, they don’t even have a GM after firing Raegan Pebley in July.

Johns, who was brought on to oversee the team’s business in April, said things are changing. And change takes time.

The Sparks are 13-25, behind the expansion Portland Fire in the standings and having lost twice to the expansion Toronto Tempo. But they’ve tripled their sports staff this year, adding performance and mental health therapists and additional basketball data people — who apparently aided in the construction of an old, uncompetitive roster.

“I couldn’t tell you what happened or who woke up one day and decided,” said Johns, who worked for the MLS champion LAFC and Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts. “But when I was recruited … I was explicitly told like, ‘This is changing,’ and like, ‘We’re hiring you because we want to signal change.’”

The biggest change that could help the Sparks? At the top, with someone who wants to push the envelope instead of compensate and play catchup.

Rendering of the inside the contrition of the Sparks’ new training facility, including a basketball court.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)