Russia, Libya and the Kremlin’s playbook
for fragile states
Tarek Megerisi
Making deals at the crossroads
Having become Haftar’s main military force, the Kremlin pivoted back to mediation. A day after Sirte fell, Putin met his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They promptly issued a joint call for a ceasefire to start on January 12th 2020.
As the date approached, Wagner operatives and their accompanying RSF mercenaries were seen evacuating the Tripoli front for Jufra airbase. Then on January 13th Putin summoned Sarraj and Haftar to Moscow for formal ceasefire negotiations based on a pre-prepared agreement that would see Haftar largely return to the status quo ante positions of April 2019, but keep Sirte.
With hindsight, this looks like a gambit by Turkey and Russia to assert themselves as the core foreign parties to Libya’s conflict and displace Europe’s mediating role. Italy had attempted to hold talks with both Haftar and Sarraj in the days before the Putin-Erdogan summit. But Sarraj had pulled out at the last second, frustrated by what he perceived as European bias towards Haftar. Germany, meanwhile, was working with the UN to host a multilateral conference in Berlin on January 19th to agree a ceasefire and an end to foreign intervention in Libya.
But Wagner’s original analysis of Haftar proved astute. While Sarraj signed up to the deal in Moscow, Haftar refused to give up his hard-won positions in south Tripoli and its environs. His intransigence was allegedly encouraged by the Emirati advisors who never left his side in Moscow and who believed the deal gave Turkey too many concessions. That evening Haftar stormed out, ceasefire unsigned, humiliating Putin.
The field marshal pulled a similar stunt in Berlin a few days later, leaving Germany’s then chancellor Angela Merkel awkwardly trying to entertain a room of world leaders, stalling for time as Haftar refused to commit to a ceasefire.[10] The UAE, which had signed up to the Berlin conference conclusions pledging to respect the arms embargo, immediately increased its weapons deliveries to Haftar, freighting 3,000 tonnes in the subsequent two weeks. Erdogan, for his part, pledged to “teach [Haftar] a lesson”.
By the end of April 2020, that lesson was well under way. Haftar had been expelled from Tripoli’s suburbs and was quickly losing territories west of the capital. For all the bluff and bluster, Wagner’s finest proved quite limited when under fire. But it was not only Russian reputations at risk, so too were Russian relations with Haftar: spats were regularly taking place at the front, and Haftar had even stopped his payments to Wagner.
So, Moscow abandoned Haftar to suffer the consequences of his prideful intransigence. The Kremlin, as always, continued to deny any control over Wagner. But Wagner’s subsequent moves against Haftar (its purported employer), to secure what would become key strategic interests for the Russian state, show once more how the group was the handiest of tools for those leaders in Moscow who denied all knowledge of it.
As Haftar’s war was gradually lost, the Kremlin worked diplomatically to secure a favourable geopolitical environment for Wagner’s activities on the ground. The group’s hold over the disinformation space likely helped support the Kremlin in this geopolitical gaming. Back in 2020 there was little media, expert or political commentary covering Russia’s role in Libya, its use of foreign mercenaries or Haftar’s weakness. Much of the analysis at that time, in English and in Arabic, focused on Turkey: its “invasion” of Libya and its deployment of Syrian “terrorists”. This commentary also tended to overestimate the LAAF’s military potency.
Moscow thus harnessed Haftar’s and his backers’ growing dependency on Wagner to engineer an existential battlefield crisis for the ageing field marshal. Under the cover of the unravelling chaos, Russia first secured its existing interests. It then re-oriented the international alliance around Haftar towards a new diplomatic endgame for the war. Finally, it used its presence around Haftar’s bases and oil interests to make him dependent on Russian forces as his last line of protection.
After Turkey helped push Haftar out of Tripoli in April 2020, the UN and European states called for a Ramadan truce. The Kremlin pounced on this opportunity to try out a fresh political angle. This time Russia opted to elevate the speaker of the House of Rrepresentatives, Aguileh Saleh, as a new political figurehead for eastern Libya. This pivot seems to have taken place just as Wagner began its initial steps to withdraw from western Libya.
On April 23rd Saleh proposed an immediate ceasefire and the creation of a new “presidency council”, shared between him and representatives from southern and western Libya. This council would then agree to form a new government. Despite a leaked video in which Saleh informed tribal delegates in eastern Libya that Russia wrote the proposal for him, European states and the UN backed the proposal as a political solution to a war that seemed to be slipping away from their influence.
Egypt and the UAE, however, were not ready to abandon Haftar and pushed him to publicly reject the proposal. The field marshal duly obliged. He also announced the dissolution of the political agreement that had formed the house of representatives and declared military rule (much to Moscow’s chagrin).
On May 18th a phone call between Putin and Erdogan seemingly led to an agreement that Wagner would withdraw from western Libya. In return the GNA would not invade eastern Libya,. At that point, Wagner withdrew from western Libya in earnest, falling back to Jufra and Libya’s oil installations.
Just a day later, the GNA and Turkey humiliatingly forced the LAAF out of the al-Watiya airbase in the country’s west. Russia had deployed forces to the base when it first arrived on the front and intended to keep control of this large strategic stronghold. But relentless Turkish drone attacks destroyed three Russian Pantsir-S1 air defence batteries in quick succession and made that untenable. This was a humiliation for Moscow and Wagner, as GNA troops paraded Russia’s much vaunted Pantsir around western Libya. They then handed the captured missile system over it to the US.
Wutiya was the loss that began the chain reaction which finally ended the war. It triggered an initial escalation between Turkey and Russia: Russia sent advanced jets into eastern Libya (six Mig 29s, two Sukhoi 24s and two Su-35s); Turkey held large air exercises over the Mediterranean that featured its US-made F-16s.
But Russia’s aircraft were not deployed to attack the Turkish air-defences in Libya or on other such sorties that might have altered the course of the war. This suggests Moscow was not challenging Ankara but merely moving in assets that would help it control the endgame.
Wutiya was also the final straw for the UAE, which finally relented and gave up on Haftar. The government in Abu Dhabi seemed satisfied with Russia’s vision: hold a new front line that guaranteed control of most of Libya’s oil and advanced Saleh’s process as a political vehicle for consolidation, while protecting and reforming the LAAF.
Indeed, Moscow instrumentalised the war via its presence in Syria to broaden its partnership with the UAE. Syria, for example, was the front through which the advanced aircraft were transferred, again disguising any Russian or Emirati culpability for violating the arms embargo. Moscow also used Russian-cultivated pro-Assad Syrian militias such as Liwa al-Quds to recruit mercenaries to secure Jufra and the oil crescent. This Libya collaboration helped facilitate Abu Dhabi’s early outreach to Assad.
To divert Turkey from the Libyan front, for example, in April 2020 Emirati leaders allegedly considered sending the dictator $3bn to break the ceasefire in northern Syria and attack Idlib. It also deepened the UAE’s involvement in Sudan, as Emirati private security firms allegedly press-ganged Sudanese men into Haftar’s limping army.
As part of its pivot to lead on a new political settlement for Libya, the Kremlin also reached out to the GNA. The target was Fathi Bashagha, a former contact of Kadyrov’s who had since risen in prominence as the GNA’s minister of the interior and a key leader in Tripoli’s defence. But Prigozhin lobbied hard against this—as he held Bashagha responsible for the continuing incarceration of the electioneering operatives who were arrested in 2019.
Wagner’s disinformation team had made a bogeyman out of Bashagha as a terrorist leader. He even featured as the villain of Russian feature films that were produced to drum up domestic support for the release of the jailed operatives. This diplomatic and military discord was also a legacy of Russia’s initial scoping exercise in Libya, underlining both the benefits and the drawbacks of the Kremlin’s policy to foment domestic competition in its outreach with prospective partner countries.
Eventually, the Kremlin settled on Libya’s foreign minister Mohammed Siyala. Far more consequentially, however, it also targeted Ahmed Maitiq, who was also a commercially influential deputy of Sarraj’s from Misrata. On June 3rd Maitiq, Siyala and Russian officials discussed an immediate ceasefire and peace process based on Saleh’s initiative that would have resulted in the resumption of oil exports, and the return of Russian companies to Libya. This would not be the last time that Maitiq returned from Russia with a controversial plan (see “There will be blood” chapter).
The Russia-Haftar alliance tried to draw the peace lines on the status quo ante positions of April 2019. But this split the GNA. Bashagha, who represented the majority position of the GNA’s armed forces, was adamant they needed to reclaim Sirte and Jufra as a security guarantee. He therefore tried to lobby the US and Europeans on the threat of Russian entrenchment at those crucial crossroads. But Wagner’s defences would make any assault a costly endeavour that GNA forces could not afford without Turkish support.
Egypt was the last piece of Moscow’s diplomatic puzzle. The government in Cairo understood the difficulties of Haftar as a partner, having been against his assault on Tripoli all along. But it also feared that the authoritarian framework it had helped Haftar build in eastern Libya through Operation Dignity would crumble without him. And, like many an abused partner, it probably still believed it could change him.
After the Wutiya debacle Haftar had gone to Cairo like the prodigal son, pleading for Egyptian military support to salvage his operation. Sisi refused to meet with him. On June 5th GNA forces began what was mooted to be a tough battle for Tarhouna,
Haftar’s last stronghold in western Libya. The widespread belief among diplomats, commentators and even some military staff that this would be a long, messy battle—very likely linked to Wagner’s propaganda efforts.
But a mere 24 hours later GNA forces had routed the LAAF almost 400km to the east and were entering Sirte, where they discovered Moscow’s red line. They were met with a series of precision airstrikes, pushing them 100km out of the city, but not causing overwhelming casualties. This was likely a strategic move to not provoke the GNA and Turkey to double down on taking Sirte.
The next day Wagner moved into Sirte, locking down Ghardabiya airbase and Sirte airport and shelling the Wadi Jaraf valley that leads to Jufra to drive out its civilian population. The fleeing families pleaded with the LAAF to intervene, but it was powerless to stop Wagner—which needed Sirte as a buffer to protect its domination over the oil crescent and control of key military bases like Jufra.
The bombardment continued for days until the area was clear, after which Wagner forces placed mines on the roads, set up air defences and built barriers out of sand to create a buffer around Sirte.
Russia had unilaterally drawn
Libya’s new dividing line.
Again Putin and Erdogan agreed to stop the fighting on the newly settled lines, with Putin allegedly threatening an escalation in Syria should the GNA attack Sirte.[12] This was a Turkish-Russian pact that would be announced on Haftar’s side in Cairo, and then become formalised in a UN-sanctified ceasefire agreement on October 23rd 2020.
Haftar ended the battle, and the war, alone and broken. The entire western front had collapsed. His tribal alliances had been eroded, the LAAF was an empty shell, and the ageing field marshal was cowering in Cairo, begging for the protection of his founding partner.
***
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.
_______________________
