If life imitated art then Russia’s two most famous prisoners would be free by now, bursting through the gates of a Tripoli prison after explosions from a rescue mission destroyed the walls that held them, just as they did in film.
Yet for Maxim Shugalei and Samer Seifan, truth is more tangled than semi-fiction.
Despite their newfound stardom in a big-budget Russian action-documentary, and backed by Kremlin demands for their release, they languish in Mitiga prison.
The Russian government, and the film’s makers at state television RT, say the two prisoners are sociologists seized as hostages by terrorist groups working within Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).
Yet documents seen by The Times, together with information shared by analysts and investigators across three
