# M23 Offensive of 2025 The offensive that put the two largest cities of eastern Congo under rebel control, and that everything in the 2025–26 diplomatic and minerals story is a response to. ## Sequence - **30 April 2024** — [[M23]] seizes the [[Rubaya Coltan Mine]] in Masisi, roughly 15% of world coltan output and by some estimates half of DRC production. - **21 January 2025** — Minova falls. **23 January** — Sake falls; the North Kivu military governor is killed. - **26–27 January 2025** — **M23 and Rwandan forces take Goma**, a city of over a million, with fighting across more than thirteen neighbourhoods. Early UN-cited counts put at least 773 dead in the immediate battle. Crisis Group cites up to 6,000 Rwandan troops in the final assault. - **16 February 2025** — **Bukavu falls**, the first time South Kivu's capital has changed hands in this cycle. - **10 December 2025** — M23 captures Uvira, six days after the [[Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity]] were signed. It withdraws under US pressure on 17 January 2026; mass graves and a DRC government report alleging 300,000 displaced and 1,500 killed during the five-week occupation follow. - **31 January 2026** — drone attack on Kisangani airport, deep in central Congo. - **March 2026** — M23 assessed at roughly **27,000 combatants, a fivefold increase since early 2025**. It refuses to disarm and is building a proto-state administration. - **August 2026** — M23 still holds Goma and Bukavu. Fighting continues on the southern and north-western axes. ## What the UN and the US have concluded UN Groups of Experts documented 3,000–4,000 Rwandan troops with M23 in 2024 and found that Rwanda exercises **"de facto control and direction over M23 operations,"** language deliberately chosen to trigger state responsibility in international law. Rwanda denies backing M23 and frames its posture as defensive against [[FDLR]]. The United States acted on the UN finding in stages: sanctions on a Rwandan minister and the M23 spokesperson in February 2025; on **2 March 2026** designation of the **Rwanda Defence Force as an institution** plus four generals — the most severe US action against Rwanda in over a decade; on 2 June 2026 two rebel commanders; and on **25 June 2026** the Gasabo Gold Refinery network, for moving at least 60 kg of gold out of South Kivu by Rwandan soldiers and M23 fighters. ## The minerals dimension M23 collects roughly **$800,000 a month** taxing coltan production and trade at Rubaya. Traders pay $4/kg at source and another $3/kg on crossing into Rwanda. Global Witness's June 2026 investigation found five of Rwanda's seven largest coltan exporters buying from the M23-controlled area, and over 2,000 tonnes of smuggled coltan entering global chains — "the largest contamination of mineral supply chains in the region in a decade," reaching Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Ericsson, Toyota and others downstream. The sharpest illustration of where policy has landed: on **5 February 2026 the Congolese government formally offered Rubaya to the United States** for inclusion in the Strategic Asset Reserve under the [[US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement]] — a mine it does not control, in order to give Washington a reason to help retake it. ## The unresolved core The sequencing deadlock has not moved. Rwanda conditions withdrawal on neutralisation of the FDLR; the DRC demands simultaneity. At the Paris Joint Oversight Committee on **24 July 2026** Rwanda formally rejected a negotiated Congolese FDLR demobilisation plan, its foreign minister calling it "crude manipulation." The structural critique, made by the Oakland Institute, Egmont and PRIF among others: as long as the architecture routes eastern minerals through Rwanda as a processing and export hub, **M23 has no economic reason to give up the mines that fund it.** ## See also [[M23]] · [[Rubaya Coltan Mine]] · [[Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity]] · [[Rwanda]] · [[Conflict Minerals Hub]] · [[Conflict Minerals Ecosystem]]