Russia, Libya and the Kremlin’s playbook
for fragile states
Tarek Megerisi
Alongside these structural changes, a massive fuel smuggling scheme between Saddam and Russia took off, which the new NOC tried to mask.
Moscow needed Libya to bypass Western sanctions on Russian fuel exports. Russian petrol and diesel exports into Libya suddenly exploded in September 2022, rising from sporadic shipments of a few thousand barrels per day (bpd) delivered over several months to almost 20,000 bpd that month alone. Russia did this covertly, with Turkish companies often acting as brokers.
By spring 2023 the exports had reached almost 90,000 bpd, exceeding 100,000 bpd by January 2024. (They only declined after that as Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries increased.) Russia exported $2.6bn worth of fuel to Libya, making it the largest seller of fuel and covering 28% of all the country’s imports (up from 4% in 2021).
But things seem to work the other way around, too. It is illegal to export fuel from Libya. Yet according to Libya’s audit bureau at least 40% of Libyan fuel is smuggled out of the country using a combination of land and sea routes.
This looks a lot like another Saddam and Wagner collaboration. The sea exports go through Benghazi’s old harbour, which conveniently sits adjacent to the Brega company’s marine oil terminal at Ras al-Minqar.
This harbour was previously used by Saddam Haftar to export scrap metal, but has been gradually upgraded to allow for covert and more efficient fuel transfers. Between March 2022 and September 2024, 48 tankers of ever greater sizes were identified making 185 visits to the harbour, and smuggling at least 1.125 million tons of diesel.
These tankers then either offload via ship-to-ship transfers near Malta or Sicily or they smuggle fuel directly to destinations such as Italy or Albania. Italy estimates that it alone loses $3bn a year in unpaid taxes from illicit fuel smuggled in. The paperwork on seized vessels often points to Brega being the provider of fuels, despite it not having the legal authority to export.
Convoys of fuel trucks have also been spotted going into Jufra airbase. From there, Wagner smuggled them onwards to other theatres such as Sudan and Mali. The other major route is through the southern city of Sebha, which saw an increase in delivered fuel from 600,000 litres per day in September 2022 to 1.2m litres per day by summer 2023.
This is far more than a city of roughly 200,000 could need. Ironically, Sebha routinely suffers from some of the worst fuel shortages in Libya, with most of these deliveries continuing onwards to Niger and Chad. Again, Russia is reportedly using these deliveries to deepen ties with Chad’s president Mahamat Déby and supply allied forces in Sudan.
Wagner and Saddam Haftar’s fruitful relationship was crudely interrupted when Prigozhin’s jet exploded, killing him, in August 2023. But by then, Libya was the linchpin of the African entente roscolonial—despite Moscow’s lack of formal political relations with Tripoli. This meant Moscow was using its Libya platform to bolster operations elsewhere on the continent, enhance its profitability and weaken Europe. The biggest change was the formalisation of Russia’s involvement with the Haftars.
In Prigozhin’s place, General Andrei Averyanov—notorious for leading the GRU unit dubbed “the bridgehead of Russian interference in Europe”—was appointed to oversee PMC operations. Alongside him, deputy defence minister Yunus Bek-Yevkurov was appointed head of Africa Corps, the Wagner successor. Yevkurov had even visited Khalifa Haftar the day before Prigozhin’s “accident”, framing this as “the first official” Russian military trip to Libya. Yevkurov and Averyanov spent the rest of the summer touring Wagner’s African equities, again starting with Libya.
This resetting of the relationship stratified Africa Corps deployments. The relationships with Libya, the logistical hub of Russia’s Africa cluster, were formalised to maximise its utility as a forward operating base. Meanwhile, more dangerous theatres like Mali retained the PMC model. By December 2023, the Russian ministry of defence officially began recruiting for Africa Corps with the aim of building it into a 20,000 strong legion.
The formalisation of Haftar’s relationship with Africa Corps allowed the Kremlin to salvage a strained relationship that was also being eroded diplomatically. Since 2021, Saddam and Wagner’s smuggling partnership had financed the LAAF’s consolidation and allowed it to retain a patronage network (the system of political power in Libya). Alongside this, LAAF-Russian cooperation within a broader alliance involving the UAE had given Haftar some geopolitical ballast that allowed him to survive the tense years after his failed assault on Tripoli.
Nevertheless, relations between Prigozhin and Khalifa Haftar remained tense. Wagner’s autonomy in Libya to the extent of barring the LAAF from bases it technically owned without Russian approval was a humiliation for the field marshal. Wagner operatives had also damaged relations with major Libyan tribes and if Haftar wished to regain autonomy, he would either have to rebuild the tribal forces that were once the backbone of the LAAF or use tribes to build up the praetorian units under his relatives.
Over 2023, the US began a diplomatic push to try to wean its one-time asset off its dependency on Russia. CIA director William Burns visited eastern Libya in January, followed up by assistant secretary of state Barbara Leaf in March. Haftar, for his part, resurrected his pre-2019 strategy of using US-Russian rivalries to his benefit, telling visiting delegations that he needed them to provide him a military deterrent against Turkey to break from Russia.
This would include Turkish military withdrawals alongside supplies of advanced aircraft and patriot missiles. But the threat perception of Turkey declined as Ankara grew closer to Abu Dhabi and built commercial partnerships with the Haftars, culminating in cooperation with Saddam in the energy sector.
Eventually Haftar and the US found a middle-ground of continuing relations through a process to unify Libya’s militaries; which helped to legitimise Haftar, politically bolster his position, and strengthening his praetorian units without him having to give anything in exchange.
Any potential US gains were wiped out by Yevkurov’s offer to replace Wagner with an official Russian presence. This offer likely appealed to the ageing Haftar. After all, he was far more familiar with state-to-state relations than these new-fangled (and disrespectful) PMCs. Moreover, an official relationship would bolster Haftar geopolitically: it would improve his position in the region, shore up the defence Russia already provided and most importantly could even revitalise his aspiration to rule all of Libya.
In September 2023, Yevkurov helped the Haftars stabilise a volatile situation after a catastrophic flood devasted eastern Derna. Haftar then returned to Moscow for the first time since storming out in January 2020, where he met Putin to frame the new relationship. Haftar saw this as an opportunity to upgrade the LAAF; demanding new aircraft, air-defences, and training for pilots and special forces. In exchange, existing Russian bases could be upgraded to enhance Russia’s presence there.
These were substantially similar discussions to those Haftar held with US representatives; the biggest difference being in the response he received. Haftar’s requirements resonated with a Kremlin that had clarity over what it needed from Libya, a long-term presence, and was less sensitive about exclusivity given that Russia felt safer amid its broader partnership with the UAE, and to a lesser extent
Turkey. Ultimately Russia was seeking to build something, meaning Moscow and Haftar could find an accommodation; whereas the US was merely seeking to block Russia, with no grander vision for Libya in place.
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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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