Tarek Megerisi
Russia, Libya and the Kremlin’s playbook
for fragile states
***
Over the past decade, Russia has re-entrenched itself in Libya, making the country the main hub of its African operations.
It has used three opportunistic processes: “cultivation” (seeding proxies), “Wagnerfication” (propping up strongmen) and “domestication” (harnessing local assets).
To understand these is to understand Russia’s playbook for embedding itself in fragile states.
It is also to identify weaknesses European states can exploit to curb Russia’s influence in Libya, a major vulnerability on the continent’s southern flank.
In 2011, as the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi rained shells upon his citizens, Russia chose not to veto the crucial UN Security Council resolution to impose a “no fly zone” over Libya. The abstention may have been part of a genuine policy to reset Russian relations with the West. Or it may have been a ploy to rebuild Russia’s multilateralist credentials, divert Western powers into more Middle Eastern misadventures, and make space for Russian interventions elsewhere.
Either way, since Vladimir Putin reclaimed the Russian presidency in 2012, his misrepresentation of this episode as a betrayal by NATO—which he says abused Russia’s abstention to conduct unilateral regime change in Libya—has become part of the origin story for his crusade against the West.
Whether or not Putin was genuinely sore about Qaddafi, Russia’s position in Libya deteriorated in the revolution’s aftermath. Libya’s new authorities cast Russia as an enemy of the Arab uprisings, depriving it of roughly $14bn in weapons, oil and construction deals. But in 2014 Libya descended once more into civil war—and it was in that unfolding chaos that the dormant Russia-Libya relationship began to stir from its slumber.
One goal of Putin’s foreign policy has always been to reaffirm Russia’s status as a great power. His attempts to do this over the past decade, antagonistically to Europe and the West, have perhaps been most visible in their flashpoints: the war in Syria, for example, and the all-out invasion of Ukraine. These are also the fronts where the United States and European countries have pushed back.
But Russia has more quietly re-entrenched in Libya over the past decade, and in so doing has met far less resistance from the West. Now, Moscow once again enjoys powerful influence in this troubled but strategically pivotal Mediterranean state. Russia’s presence extends from Libya’s north-eastern coastline to its south-western Sahelian borders.
Russian forces maintain this presence via proxies, notably the eastern Libyan dictator Khalifa Haftar, from five military bases dotted through the country. These forces are also present, and wield influence over, Libya’s southern oil fields and eastern oil terminals. Russia has used all this to help Haftar’s putative heir, Saddam Haftar, expand Libya’s role as a hotspot for smuggling: of weapons, drugs, fuel—and people.
Libya’s lawlessness has thus proven valuable for the Kremlin. So much so that the country has become a forward operating base to help Russia deploy fighters and equipment to other theatres (and extract assets from them).
It was telling that after the fall of Moscow’s Middle Eastern proxy, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in December 2024, Russia simply relocated many Syrian assets to Libya. Syria remains vital to Russia; hence Moscow’s swift pivot to working with the new authorities in Damascus. But by the end of 2024, Libya was Moscow’s main hub to feed its African operations.
This paper examines the gambits, tactics and strategies the Kremlin deployed to re-embed itself in Libya under Europe’s nose. The patterns it uncovers in the past ten years of Russian engagement in the country make clear that this was far from a “masterplan”. But they also provide a window onto the evolution of Russia’s foreign policy since 2014. Indeed, this paper shows that Russia’s re-engagement in Libya took place over three phases that add up to a playbook for Russia embedding itself in and exploiting fragile states. These are:
Cultivation: Seeding potential proxies through a range of influence groups, sowing fertile ground for deeper interactions in states where Russia lacks pre-existing relations;
Wagnerfication: Deploying Russia’s foreign intelligence agency the GRU (previously under the banner of the “Wagner Group” and other such fronts) to entrench in a country by helping a proxy, usually a struggling strongman;
Domestication: Using increasingly open control over that proxy and a country’s assets to advance Russian interests, often to the severe detriment of the country (and European security).
Over the course of these different approaches in Libya, one constant in Russia’s tactics has been patient opportunism to continuously deepen its entrenchment. Another has been its quest for openings to develop its relations with powers such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all the while undermining Europe and the West.
It has done this by militarily, diplomatically and politically assisting Haftar and other proxies such as Saif al-Islam Qaddafi (Muammar Qaddafi’s son, now wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity) to increase their influence in Libya, but also their dependence on Moscow. Russia then moved through these proxies to effectively claim and exploit military bases, oil infrastructure and smuggling routes.
But Russia’s hold in Libya remains moored to the fate of its proxies. Unlike other intervening states—notably Turkey, which is a key backer of Libya’s internationally-recognised government in Tripoli—Russia has no legal military presence in Libya.
This means that Russian power there still depends on Libya remaining in its state of transition. Leaders in the Kremlin are reportedly working to correct this by seeking to lease a naval base in Libya’s far eastern port city of Tobruk. It is also developing relations around the government in western Libya and trying to shoehorn its proxies into positions of legal authority.
The ins and outs of the past decade of Russian influence in Libya thus also reveal the frailties of the Kremlin’s approaches, and how the very European countries it works to undermine could displace its chaos-exploitation activities.
European policymakers are juggling many competing and urgent priorities. But whether they like it or not, Europe’s strategic competition with Russia extends to the southern neighbourhood. Displacing Russia from Libya would have knock-on effects throughout this competition.
It would close off vital funds for its aggression in Ukraine. It would also obstruct Russia’s efforts to fuel Sudan’s civil war. And it would hamper Russia’s attempts to flip African states against Europe, helping to redefine the global competition for critical raw materials and undermine Russia’s entire Africa strategy.
European countries need to start by making Russia’s deployment more costly for Moscow. They should do this by combatting the smuggling activities it is linked to, as well as developing new legal tools to fight Russia’s network of private military companies (PMCs). In Libya, Europeans will have to degrade Russia’s proxies and press key regional actors to stop facilitating destabilising Russian activity.
But they will also need to offer a vision of their own. They should aim to build coalitions with Russia’s current partners and work with them to secure a safer space for all to pursue their interests. This feeds into the longer-term goal of shepherding Libya towards a unified, legitimate government that would ideally call for Russia to leave. And at the very least it would dilute Moscow’s influence and strengthen both Libyan independence and Libya’s capacity to resist Russian-inspired criminal activity.
***
Tarek Megerisi is a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. His work mainly addresses how European policy making towards the Maghreb and Mediterranean regions can become more strategic, harmonious, and incisive—with a long-term focus on Libya.
_______________________
