Tensions Between Russian, Western Allies Grow Over Niger Coup

European governments began evacuating their citizens from Niger on Tuesday after last week’s coup in the West African country triggered a tense standoff between Moscow’s allies in the region and states that have worked more closely with the U.S. and other Western powers.

The evacuations—led by France, Niger’s former colonial power—show that European governments expect their citizens to be at higher risk in the country, which has been central to U.S. efforts to combat Islamist militants in the Sahel, the semiarid strip south of the Sahara.  

Western officials worry that the military junta that detained Niger’s elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, last week could develop closer ties with Russia, especially if France and the U.S. cut military aid to the junta. On Sunday, thousands of pro-coup protesters, some of them waving Russian flags and placards demanding a French exit from Niger, threw stones at the French Embassy in the capital Niamey.

“Given the situation in Niamey, the violence that took place against our embassy the day before yesterday and the closure of airspace, which leaves our compatriots without the possibility of leaving the country by their own means, France is preparing the evacuation of its nationals and European nationals wishing to leave the country,” the French Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. “The evacuation will start today,” it added.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said on the social-media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that his government would dispatch a flight to Niamey to help Italian nationals leave the country.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said there were currently no plans to evacuate U.S. citizens from Niger.

“We’re watching this literally by the hour and if we have to make adjustments, we will make adjustments—we’re just not there at this time,” Kirby said.

The U.S. government has spent around $500 million arming Niger’s military in recent years and has some 1,100 troops and drones stationed in the country.

The coup, led by Niger’s powerful presidential guard, has revealed deep divisions among its West African neighbors, several of which have also seen their elected governments ousted by militaries in recent years.

Leaders from the Economic Community of West African States—dominated by Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, which shares a 1,000-mile border with Niger—threw their weight behind Bazoum. The group, known as Ecowas, imposed tough financial and trade sanctions on Niger and said that if the junta failed to reinstate Bazoum by the end of the week, they would consider a military intervention.

That threat prompted a warning from the military leaders of Mali and Burkina Faso—two of Niger’s neighbors that have allied with Moscow after their own coups d’état—that they would help defend the Nigerien junta against an Ecowas intervention.

Both sides are likely bluffing about a military confrontation, with neither side interested in a broader regional conflict, said Cameron Hudson, former chief of staff to the U.S. special envoy for Sudan.

Mali and Burkina Faso are already stretched from fighting jihadist militants in their own borders, while there is internal opposition to an armed intervention in Nigeria’s military, which would have to lead such a mission, Hudson said. Still, the Malian and Burkinabè warning “worked by raising the stakes and costs of any Ecowas intervention” and spotlighted Moscow’s grip on the region, he said.

French Foreign Minister

Colonna blamed the junta and Russia for the attack on the French Embassy.

“What we saw [on Sunday] was an organized, non-spontaneous, violent, extremely dangerous protest, with Molotov cocktails, Russian flags, anti-French slogans copied and pasted from what we can see elsewhere,” she said. “So all the usual ingredients of destabilization in the Russian-African style.” 

Foreign ministry officials said around 1,200 French citizens live in Niger, although many of them are currently on vacation outside the country. That number doesn’t include some 1,500 French troops who are stationed in Niger and who will remain there, the French defense ministry said.

French Foreign Ministry officials said they were in contact with the U.S. about the possible evacuation of American citizens.

France deployed troops to the Sahel to help fight Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked militants in 2013 under Socialist President François Hollande. It was forced to scale back its presence and focus its efforts in Niger, where Bazoum was an ally, after the coups in Mali and Burkina Faso. 

—Michael M. Phillips and Gordon Lubold contributed to this article.

Write to Noemie Bisserbe at [email protected], Benoit Faucon at [email protected] and Gabriele Steinhauser at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications
Several of Niger’s West African neighbors have seen their elected governments ousted by militaries in recent years. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that these military takeovers had occured in recent weeks. (Corrected on Aug. 2.)