Three Russians detained in N’Djamena in mid-September, one of them known for his links to the late Evgeny Prigojine, former head of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, were released on Friday, November 15 and Saturday, November 16, the Russian embassy announced. in Chad on his Facebook page. Your release “imminent” They had been officially announced at the end of September, but had remained blocked since then. “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.
The message published on Saturday on the Facebook page of the Russian embassy specifies that the three Russians are “He returned to Moscow on a commercial flight”. Among them is Maxim Chougaleï, 57, presented as a “sociologist” but subject to European sanctions for his links with the Wagner Group, which deployed mercenaries in several African countries. He was detained along 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 He was also released.
These arrests have come as a surprise, since Moscow and N’Djamena have become very close in recent months, in particular thanks to a military cooperation agreement, in which Russia takes 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 that host, in various capacities, the Russian paramilitary forces resulting from the reorganization of the Wagner Group, whose former leader died in a mysterious accident. air on August 23. , 2023.
“Viva!” Hurrah! Hurrah! Russia forward »Maxim Chougaleï’s friends reacted in a conversation on their 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” Prigozhin.
Maxim Chougaleï and Samer Hasan Ali Soueïfan had already been detained in Libya in May 2019 and released in December of the same year, after being accused of trying to interfere in local elections, in relation to Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, according to Russian media.
