Mustafa Fetouri
In his first comment on post-Assad Syria on 16 December, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia maintains relations with all groups in Syria and countries in the region and that most are interested in Russia’s military bases “remaining” in Syria. A week earlier, his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he agreed with Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the new Syrian leader, that relations with Damascus were “long-term and strategic.”
At the same time, it is a fact that Russia is moving military hardware from its Tartous naval base in Syria to both Russia and eastern Libya, where Moscow maintains military ties to the region’s dominant strong man, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
Russian bases in Syria were meant to serve three long-term strategic objectives: to increase Moscow’s footprint in the region and thus challenge Western hegemony; to maintain its historical ties to the Middle East with a projection of power; and to be a springboard for Moscow’s Africa Corps, which is spearheading Russia’s return to old allies across the continent. Helping Bashar Al-Assad stay in power was a temporary tactical goal which, in part, explains giving up on him once it became unsustainable.
When Moscow increased its military presence in Syria in 2015 it did not show any immediate interest in Libya, which was already in chaos. The North African country was not part of any Russian plans in the region which is odd, geopolitically, given Libya’s strategic location and the fact that it is rich in natural resources. However, Moscow was watching developments in the country closely, while staying low key and preferring not to play any active role in the Libyan fiasco.
In late 2017 and early 2018 that position changed dramatically when mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group appeared in eastern and central Libya where most oil installation are. Wagner sent a couple of thousand fighters to help Haftar after he launched a military campaign in April 2019 to take the capital, Tripoli. Haftar was defeated and his troops retreated to Sirte, 500 km east of Tripoli, despite camping for months just outside the city.
In the following years, Moscow kept denying that it had any connection to Wagner and insisted that the mercenary entity was a private company with no links to the Russian state. By then Wagner was already present in the Central African Republic and Sudan, and testing the waters for a potential push towards the African Sahel while Moscow continued its denial of any ties to the group. Within the next couple of years Wagner expanded to four more African Sahel countries. It took another dramatic event for Moscow to acknowledge publicly otherwise.
The following month Putin revealed what was already known; that Wagner, despite being portrayed as a private company, was indeed funded by the Russian state. Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash in August 2023. That led to the Russian ministry of defence taking over Wagner’s assets and its legacy across Africa, including Libya. From the beginning Wagner was clearly part of Russia’s long-term strategy in Africa, as the group led the earlier planning and establishment of what would become Russia’s Africa Corps.
Prior to setting foot on Libyan soil, Wagner was handling its African operations out of Syria, which served as a springboard and logistical hub for the mercenaries as they shuttled back and forth to different African countries. Even Wagner in Libya was, initially, supplied out of Russian bases in Syria regardless if such bases were controlled by Wagner or Russia’s ministry of defence.
However, the collapse of the Syrian regime is forcing Moscow to change its plans, not only for the Middle East, but also for its nascent Africa Corps. Libya has been the launching pad for Russian military activities in Africa beyond the Sahara since late 2020. The Russians now control a couple of military bases in eastern and southern Libya, and are expanding quickly. In western Libya, Turkiye — an ally of Moscow elsewhere but its rival in Libya — has established itself as the dominant military force.
However, there is a major difference between their respective presence in Libya: Turkiye sent troops there “legally” as it was invited to do so by the UN-recognised government in 2019 to fend off Haftar’s Wagner-supported offensive. Denying any connection to Wagner means that Moscow’s military presence in Libya today is neither “official” nor documented, and it is not clear for how long and for what purpose. Haftar never signed any “treaty” or deal with Wagner which, it could be argued, Moscow has inherited even if such a document is deemed illegal.
For Libya to become the focal point of Russian strategy in the southern Mediterranean and Africa is not only bad for the country, but also poses an existential threat. While both Russia and Turkiye endorsed and accepted UN Security Council Resolution 2617 (December, 2021) calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Libya, both countries still maintain a military presence there.
Nevertheless, they now find themselves in the crosshairs of NATO, whose presence in Italy is just an hour’s flight north, and Russia. There is now the potential for Libya to become a battlefield as the West seeks to limit or end Russia’s military expansion in Libya and beyond. It does not have to be Russian troops fighting NATO counterparts, but could be fought through local proxies.
The irony here could not be greater: under Gaddafi, Libyans used to celebrate, every year, three national occasions in which foreign troops and settlers were kicked out of the country. In March 1970, Gaddafi, who had come to power six months earlier, ordered British troops out of El-Adem Air Base in Tobruk; in June he kicked the Americans out of the huge Wheelus Air Bases just east of Tripoli; and in October of the same year he sent home some 20,000 Italian settlers, who had been transferred from Italy to Libya during the occupation and given the best land in the country. Many Libyans are sure that their former late leader is turning in his grave to see foreign troops back on Libyan soil again.
___________________
