Russia, Libya and the Kremlin’s playbook
for fragile states
Tarek Megerisi
Sparkling conversation
The GNA’s mandate was set to expire in December 2017. Russia’s response seems to have been to attempt to mediate a political deal to form a new government and formalise the LAAF as Libya’s army. This would have given Haftar and his Soviet-trained officers a powerful role in the country’s institutions.
In January 2017 Russia granted the field marshal the military honour of being received on its aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, where he spoke again with Shoigu and received assurances of more military support. Alongside this, Moscow increased its contact with the GNA and political and military forces from Misrata on Libya’s north-western coast. But the Kremlin never got the chance to turn these flirtations into a summit.
In July 2017 the French president Emmanuel Macron pipped Putin as a mediator, convening Haftar and Sarraj at La Celle St Cloud in France where they agreed a roadmap towards elections. Haftar, for his part, roundly ignored the roadmap to continue with his conquering. He also wooed the Kremlin back towards him with promises of oil from the crescent Russia had helped him seize. Still constrained by the same limits on arms transfers, however, Russia’s ministry of defence would have to give way to the less conspicuous GRU.
In May 2018 Wagner appeared in Libya for the first time, helping Haftar storm Derna—the last city in eastern Libya outside his control. Haftar was apparently so pleased with this support that he returned to Moscow on November 10th to catch up with Shoigu and, more notably, Prigozhin.
The meetings in Moscow came during the build-up to Italy’s November 12th “Palermo Conference”, through which Rome aimed to jumpstart the stalled Haftar-Sarraj agreement from La Celle St Cloud. But Moscow’s mercurial friend made life difficult. Indeed, he prevaricated over whether he would attend at all, confirming only at the last minute, and then arriving more than an hour late.
Haftar also refused to attend plenary sessions, instead insisting on a “mini summit” with Sarraj, Sisi and Russia’s then prime minister Dimitry Medvedev. The Russia-Egypt-Libya breakout room pointedly excluded Turkey (which at that point was at odds with Russia in Syria and a key regional rival of Egypt and the UAE). This exclusion promptly turned the mini summit into a mini diplomatic scandal, as Ankara’s delegation stormed out of the conference altogether. Later Sarraj would pull Medvedev aside and complain about Russia’s destabilising support for Haftar.
Russian military flights to Libya had peaked alongside Wagner’s deployment as Haftar consolidated in the east and moved south. The field marshal had been struggling to operate around or gain control of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), Libya’s sole legal seller of crude. But Wagner already had expertise in helping Assad in Syria illicitly sell oil, generally offering military assistance in return for shares in local assets. This suggests Haftar was attempting to keep his promises to transform control of the oil crescent into sales.
This indicates another shift in Moscow’s tactics: unable to claim an exclusive proxy or distinguish itself as a mediator, the Kremlin would use Wagner to entrench around Libya’s assets and use them to serve Russian interests.
Cultivation in the roscolonial
Europeans can learn a lot from how Russia re-established itself in Libya: from better understanding how the Kremlin opens up unfamiliar states to its influence, to the need to create robust diplomatic processes and the importance of protecting international norms and alliances. Indeed, the early stages of the second Trump presidency suggest that Europeans should view these less as lessons to take in gradually and more as a long-overdue cramming session.
Russia’s re-entry into Libya was a masterclass in how to fill a vacuum—even if it was in pursuit of an inherently destabilising goal. The network of elites Russia deployed demonstrates the breadth of tools Russia can apply to grasp such opportunities. Kadyrov was a cultural envoy of sorts; the oligarchs offered an avenue with corrupt autocrats and influential business figures; the ministry of defence provided an attractive vehicle for relationship building with local military actors, given Russia’s powerful military reputation.
The series of coups in the Sahel over the past few years have provided ample opportunity for Russia to deploy its military leverage. Russia has most successfully built relationships with African partners who have performed such coups, like Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traore; or helped others towards coups of their own, such as the junta in Niger and Sudan’s RSF. Of course, this relationship-building depends upon bypassing any sort of rules-based order, which Europeans could not police in Libya because key states like France were also supporting Haftar.
But looking back, Russia’s re-entry into Libya also provides insight into the processes by which Russia’s relationship-building continues towards client relationships and entrenchment. If the US and European governments had better policed the arms embargo, then Russia would not have been able to develop a foothold in Libya. Nor could it have benefited from its Libyan scoping exercise to build relationships with vital partners of the West such as the UAE.
It was in this context of impunity that Russia introduced Wagner. The result was Haftar being empowered to counter Macron’s electoral process and undermine the Palermo conference. Europeans’ own involvement with Haftar and their struggles to build a meaningful Libyan or international constituency around their conferences gave Russia and Haftar the space to do this.
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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.
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