[3] Promoted to lieutenant in 2014, Traoré joined MINUSMA, a United Nations peacekeeping force involved in the Mali War.

[10][3] Traoré later claimed that he became disillusioned with his country's leadership around this time, as he saw the widespread lack of equipment of Burkinabe soldiers, while politicians were handing out "suitcases of money" for bribery.

[2] Traoré was part of the group of army officers that supported the January 2022 Burkina Faso coup d'état and brought the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration military junta to power.

[5] Many supporters of the January coup became dissatisfied with the performance of Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the junta's leader, regarding his inability to contain the jihadist insurgency.

Traoré later claimed that he and other officers had tried to get Damiba to "refocus" on the rebellion, but eventually opted to overthrow him as "his ambitions were diverting away from what we set out to do".

He has kept a tight control on his communication while carefully trying to present himself primarily as a war leader, possibly to avoid the poor public image of his predecessors.

[2] In April 2023, he declared a "general mobilisation" of the population to support the military, as rebel forces continued to increase the rate of their attacks.

[2] In the following month, Traoré questioned the planned restoration of democracy for 2024, stating that elections could not be held unless the insurgents were pushed back and the security situation had been improved.

[22][23] In February 2023, Traoré's government expelled the French forces assisting in fighting the local insurgency from Burkina Faso.

[2] According to Reuters and The New York Times, Traoré was suspected of having a connection with Russian mercenary organization Wagner Group due to having expressed anti-French and pro-Russian views.

[26] The Government of Ghana publicly alleged that Traoré began collaborating with the Wagner Group following the coup, enlisting the mercenaries against the jihadist rebels.

[25][15] On 29 July 2023, following the 2023 Russia–Africa Summit, Traoré said that the people of his country support Russia, and communicated that a decision had been made to reopen the Russian embassy, which was closed in 1992.

[28] According to the newspaper Le Monde in May 2023, "the Traoré regime seems, for the time being, to be favouring the use of its own forces in the fight against the jihadists" and has not asked Wagner's Russians for help.