Was there some sort of assurance that nothing was going to happen when the contract expired, and this expectation was changed? Freenom hasn’t been registering domains since Jan 1.
It’s seeming a little odd to me that this is catching people with their pants down.
I’m not a lawyer, but that depends on the contract between A and B.
You can’t prevent a country from revoking all ccTLD domains, if that is what they want to do. Mali probably doesn’t care about the contract, but even if they do, they can just make a new law, any country can claim domains that break their laws.