Russia, Libya and the Kremlin’s playbook
for fragile states
Tarek Megerisi
In the aftermath of Haftar’s war, an UN-convened committee was tasked to elect a new prime minister and president for Libya. That duo would organise national elections by December 24th 2021. Russia allegedly worked behind the scenes as a bridge between Cairo and Ankara to construct its dream team of Saleh (Russia’s guy) as president and Bashagha (Turkey’s guy) as prime minister. With that, Moscow’s status in Libya would have been secure.
Indeed, the June 6th “Cairo declaration” from which the roadmap grew looked an awful lot like an evolution of the Saleh-via-Russia proposal from earlier in 2020. It was a solution that synthesised the paternalistic Egyptian belief that the dissolution of the LAAF could lead to Libya’s disintegration with Russia’s tactic from 2017 to legitimise its proxies through a political process.
The announcement included existing propagandistic narratives, such as labelling the LAAF as Libya’s national army and framing it as a counter to the “regional threat” posed by Turkey’s “invasion”. The declaration thus conveniently absolved Haftar’s forces and his international coalition of any accountability for the war they started.
Beyond that, the agreement premised the ceasefire on GNA forces surrendering all their weapons to the shattered LAAF and called for foreign mercenaries to leave Libya; but it failed to mention Wagner. Nor did it mention Wagner’s detachments of press-ganged Syrians, the Sudanese Janjaweed militias from Prigozhin’s burgeoning relationship with the RSF, or the Chadian anti-government rebel groups that Wagner and the LAAF often employed. Underpinning this was a quiet understanding between Russia and Egypt that Haftar would later retired and the LAAF resurrected under a different Qaddafi-era officer.
Nonetheless, its presentation as almost an Arab-nationalist project quickly won it support from multiple Arab states. Egypt and the UAE then talked key Western states such as the US and Britain into backing it. (France needed less persuasion as a longstanding member of their coalition in Libya.) According to diplomats working on Libya at the time, Western leaders bought into the narrative of their Arab partners that this was the only way to avert a long war in eastern Libya and Turkey’s colonisation of the country.
But Egypt still wasn’t quite ready to let go of Haftar. Cairo worked to repair ties between Saleh and Haftar to create a powerful eastern bloc able to influence the UN process. This international feeding frenzy to shape the process ate away at its integrity.
Over the end of 2020, a deeply corrupt round of horse trading took place over the leading positions for an empty roadmap. To many observers’ surprise, the dream team lost the war of bribes—with the ever-mercurial Haftar disappointing Egypt once more as he flipped to support the man who would become prime minister, Abdul-Hamid Dbeibeh.
The December 2021 election famously did not happen as Libya’s political elite scrapped to take full control of the ill-defined electoral process so they could engineer it in their favour. In the run-up, Russia extended limited support without picking sides to all of its onetime proxies, Saif, Haftar and Saleh (who all ran for President).
Wagnerfication in the roscolonial
Between 2019 and the end of 2020, European influence in Libya and relevance to Libyan politics plummeted—displaced by Russia and Turkey. While Russia had undermined Europe diplomatically in the pre-Tripoli era, in this period it worked through Haftar as a “best of a bad bunch” proxy to entrench itself in Libya and build its political and military influence.
Russia showed a rationality about picking a proxy and building influence in Libya that contrasted with the often ideological or highly abstract approach of its Western counterparts. France and the US backed Haftar under a flawed analysis of him as a military strongman; Wagner coldly assessed him as unreliable and tried to juggle two bad choices in Haftar and Saif.
At the UNSC the Kremlin helped to protect Haftar’s war, likely so that Russia could benefit from the chaos it left in its wake. But the Kremlin not only rendered Haftar dependent on Moscow; his regional allies such as the UAE also came to need Russia’s military assistance.
This approach has echoed in other theatres. The discrepancy between Russia’s cold pragmatism and Europe’s ideological approach was evident in Niger when President Mohamed Bazoum was displaced by a Russian-backed military coup in 2023.
Bazoum was a democratically elected leader with Western support. But Russia played on public discontent, again building a formidable disinformation machine that spins a paranoia that now protects the military junta. In Libya, Niger and elsewhere, Europe’s resources would have been well-spent strengthening the information space: for instance, expanding the presence of news institutions into new forms of media and producing a stream of reliable, consistent content that would have pre-emptively filled the void into which Russia eventually surged.
However, the frailty of Russia’s approach is reflected in its initial points of frustration with Haftar. That is: the Kremlin struggled to convert its military cutting-edge into decision-making authority or contracts. This is likely why it sought once more to formalise its authority by brokering the 2019 deal with Erdogan; just as it tried to do in 2017, before Macron beat Putin to a summit.
Nevertheless, Russia’s ability to deploy a complex and effective set of diplomatic, political and military tools to protect Haftar showcased their value to the UAE, which clearly needed some operational assistance in bringing its foreign policy visions to life.
It sparked a relationship that would continue through Sudan and the Sahel. Russia was not just setting a new pace in Libya; through its disinformation networks it had managed to shape how Western audiences and even Western policymakers were discussing the conflict, adeptly moving the spotlight from its mercenary forces to Turkey.
In turning away from Haftar, Russia then strengthened relations with key political players across Libya and domesticated the once-troublesome field marshal. This relegated the LAAF to a vehicle that provided cover for Wagner without being able to hinder its activities.
LAAF staff were not even allowed to access Russian sites such as Jufra without Wagner’s approval. Although they have been less able to do this in other theatres since, Russia’s rapid spread through the Sahel has been accompanied by many tales of dominance and political prowess that shape thinking across the West even as Moscow struggles to entrench as effectively in countries like Mali or Burkina Faso as they did in Libya.
***
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.
___________________
