Further footage shows a Tuareg fighter taunting a half-naked Russian-speaking fighter. A rebel commander later offered to send Wagner prisoners, including a senior commander, to Ukraine to help its “struggle for justice and freedom”.

Fedyanin had been travelling with the convoy when he was killed in the attack, according to reports.

In his last message on the Grey Zone, Fedyanin posted photographs of heavily armed Wagner fighters posing in front of a burning tree in the desert above the sardonic caption: “It’s hot in Africa, literally and figuratively.”

Fedyanin had complained earlier this month that organising convoys across the desert was difficult with local allies, who he described as unreliable.

“It is sometimes difficult to organise convoys with allies due to, let’s say, their mentality,” he said. “In the Middle East and Africa, locals live a leisurely life.”

Anastasia Kashevarova, a Wagner cheerleader and military blogger with 250,000 subscribers, corroborated the attack.