Three Russians arrested in N'Djamena in mid-September, including one known for his links with the late Evgueni Prigojine, the former boss of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, were released on Friday November 15 and Saturday November 16, announced the embassy of Russia in Chad on its Facebook page. Their release « imminent » had been officially announced at the end of September, but they had since remained blocked “without explanation” at the airport, where they were arrested on September 19 when they got off the plane at the same time as a Belarusian, according to the African Initiative website, a press agency run by a former member of the Russian security services.
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The message posted Saturday on the Facebook page of the Russian embassy specifies that the three Russians are “returned to Moscow on a commercial flight”. Among them is Maxim Chougaleï, 58, presented as a “sociologist” but under European sanctions for his links with the Wagner Group, which deployed mercenaries in several African countries. He was detained with two other Russians, Samer Hasan Ali Soueïfan (born in 1982) and EI Tsarev (born in 1997), as well as with the Belarusian A. Dzenisevich (born in 1982), according to the Russian embassy, which specifies that the latter was also released.
These arrests came as a surprise as Moscow and N'Djamena have become very close in recent months, notably with a military cooperation agreement, with Russia taking advantage of the weakened position of France, a former colonial power forced to resize its presence in the Sahel. Chad is the last country in the region to host French bases. Between the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya and Niger, this landlocked state is now surrounded by countries welcoming, in various capacities, Russian paramilitary forces resulting from the reorganization of the Wagner Group, whose former boss died in a mysterious plane crash on August 23, 2023.
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“Hurray!” Hooray! Hooray! Russia forward »reacted the friends of Maxim Chougaleï in a conversation on his Telegram account to the announcement of his release. “All this means that power in Chad is unstable”analyzes one of the messages. Other comments evoke a possible revenge from the Kremlin, while the last message from the “sociologist”, dated August 23, saluted the memory of the “hero” Prigogine
Maxim Chougaleï and Samer Hasan Ali Soueïfan had already been arrested in Libya in May 2019, then released in December of the same year, after being accused of attempting to interfere in local elections, in connection with Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, according to Russian media.
