Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday arrived in Chad, the last leg of a tour of African nations marked by strong anti-Western sentiment and the promise of greater military backing against jihadists.
The veteran diplomat offered to strengthen economic, trade and above all military cooperation with Guinea, Congo and Burkina Faso, his first stops.
The Kremlin has seen relations with the West plummet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has doubled down on efforts to boost its influence in Africa, replacing western powers, above all France.
Lavrov landed in N’Djamena on Wednesday afternoon leading a large delegation.
Chad is one of the last missing pieces in the puzzle Moscow is trying to put together in the Sahel region, not long since France’s sphere of influence.
France has seen its troops pushed out of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso by their military regimes since 2022.
Mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group have arrived, all presented as military instructors.
Paris still deploys about 1,000 soldiers in Chad, and says it intends to stay there, if in reduced numbers.
Social media is rife with rumours of armed Russians working alongside Chadian soldiers, notably in the south.
But officially for now, N’Djamena is the last hold-out against the Russian influx.
Lavrov was scheduled to meet Chad’s General Mahamat Idriss Deby who has just been elected president after three years at the head of a military junta.
Deby paid a visit to Moscow in January raising questions about his plans to broaden his international allies.
“For six months we’ve seen a veritable warming of relations between Russian and Chad,” African studies expert Vsevolod Sviridov told AFP in Moscow.