Vagner Group in Libya
Russia’s Wagner Group, a shadowy paramilitary organisation tied to the Kremlin, played a significant role in Libya, supporting renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) in the country’s civil war. Sustaining a military presence in Libya is key to Russia’s agendas elsewhere on the African continent, especially in the Sahel region. In late 2021 and early 2022, for example, Russian planes transported armed personnel and arms from Syria to Mali via an airbase near Benghazi.
Russia’s role in eastern Libya has become important not only to Haftar and those Libyans aligned with him, such as parliament-appointed Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha, but also other external actors with stakes in the North African country’s uncertain future. The Russians have built up a presence in Libya that makes Haftar structurally unable to detach himself from Moscow.
The UN sanctions monitors identified more than two dozen flights between Russia and eastern Libya from August 2018 to August 2019 by civilian aircraft “strongly linked to, or owned by” Wagner Group or related companies. The May 2020 UN report said forces affiliated with the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) had captured arms “typical of the weaponry observed being used by ChVK Wagner operatives elsewhere in eastern Ukraine and Syria”.
A Russian drive to recruit Syrians to fight in Libya for warlord Khalifa Haftar accelerated in May 2020 when hundreds of mercenaries were signed up. Private military contractor Wagner Group is conducting the hiring with Russian army supervision. A former Wagner Group member said it first sent Syrians to Libya in 2019. Moscow's involvement in Libya is an extension of its ambition to project influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Wagner has up to 1,200 people deployed in Libya, according to a confidential UN report seen by Reuters in May 2020. The Russian state has denied having forces in Libya. When asked in January 2020 if the Wagner Group is fighting in Libya, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that if there were Russians in Libya, they were not representing the Russian state, nor were they paid by the state.
In 2022 members of security forces aligned with both the Government of National Unity and the Libyan National Army, including contracted elements of Russia’s Wagner Group supporting the Libyan National Army, committed numerous abuses.
Although Moscow might need to adjust and reconfigure its mission in Libya, there is good reason to expect the Russians to continue their campaign, which has served to shape the security architecture of Libya’s east, where Haftar is based, and entrench itself. “Before February 24 [when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began], there was no indication that the clandestine Russian mission [in Libya] was withdrawing, shrinking, or anything of the sort,” Jalel Harchaoui, a researcher specialising in Libya, told Al Jazeera 15 ASpril 2022. “It was rather quiet. The Libyans who live near [Russian] bases got used to seeing some Russians at the grocery store. Some camps, bases, and air bases are known to be fully controlled by Russians,” Harchaoui added. “In those particular cases, even the LNA itself sometimes needs to get permission before entering the base.”
While there are some unconfirmed reports that Russian mercenaries have been withdrawn from the country to fight in Ukraine, the majority have remained. “The number of [Russian] fighters who made their way to Ukraine would probably be tiny as the Kremlin wants to have a stake in Libya’s future and needs these foreign mercenaries to maintain their hold on the country,” said Ferhat Polat, a Libya researcher at the TRT World Research Centre.
“You clearly have reliance on the perennial and permanent character of the Russian footprint in Libya. It wasn’t about to shrink,” said Harchaoui. “Even the reduction, the modest drawdown of probably 300 or 400 individuals is not the end of the mission. It doesn’t presage, announce, or augur capitulation.” The complete withdrawal of Russian forces from the country would throw off the balance of power that has protected Haftar’s longevity in the east. With at least three airbases, military camps, and spies on the ground, the Russians retain vast amounts of leverage in Libya that no meaningful power appears to be eager to seriously diminish.
“There’s no NATO plan to remove Russia [from Libya],” explained Harchaoui. “The reason is, because Haftar is the only security architecture for huge parts of Libya — the eastern half mainly. Haftar is someone that you cannot preserve if you go after the Russians. If you forcefully remove the Russians, you will automatically and inevitably weaken Haftar.”
Turkey, one of NATO’s militarily most powerful member states, kept a close eye on ways in which the war in Ukraine might affect Russia’s influence in the Maghreb. Although Ankara and Moscow have supported opposing sides in Libya, they also maintain a relationship based on “adversarial collaboration” that allows them to pursue economic, political, and military goals in their respective areas in the country and elsewhere. While Turkey would support another military venture against the LNA were Haftar to mount another offensive as he did in April 2019, Ankara would prefer to avoid a major confrontation with Russia in Libya.
Russia, facing economic, military, and diplomatic pressures at home, is far less likely to entertain Haftar waging another large-scale offensive. “The decisive failure of the LNA offensive on Tripoli … will likely deter a major Russian military intervention in Libya going forward,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
Such a venture would likely be met with a Turkish-backed, and US-blessed, military counteroffensive by actors in western Libya, especially considering the world’s new geopolitical atmosphere in which Washington has a renewed appetite for countering Russia. At the same time, an oil blockade by Haftar may elicit sanctions and other tough measures.
Russia, facing economic, military, and diplomatic pressures at home, is far less likely to entertain Haftar waging another large-scale offensive. “The decisive failure of the LNA offensive on Tripoli … will likely deter a major Russian military intervention in Libya going forward,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. Such a venture would likely be met with a Turkish-backed, and US-blessed, military counteroffensive by actors in western Libya, especially considering the world’s new geopolitical atmosphere in which Washington has a renewed appetite for countering Russia. At the same time, an oil blockade by Haftar may elicit sanctions and other tough measures.
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