Libya - Soviet / Russia Relations
The Western-backed and UN-recognized so-called "Government of National Accord" (GNA) has failed to functionally govern the country in any effective capacity. Haftar's Russian-backed Libyan National Army" (LNA) had been much more successful in this respect. Russia calls for the parties to the Libyan conflict to engage in a constructive dialogue on political settlement as the only way to end the crisis.
The British tabloid Sun published a scandalous report 08 October 2018 alleging that Russia was trying to turn Libya into a "new Syria" through the covert deployment of its military to Tobruk and Benghazi under the disguise of Wagner mercenaries. It also purported that Moscow has dispatched Kalibr cruise missiles and the S-300 anti-air systems to that part of the war-torn country in order to aid Halifa Khaftar, the leader of the internationally unrecognized "Libyan National Army" (LNA) and the most powerful of Libya's warlords. The whole point in doing so, the outlet claimed, is to establish a naval base there that would allow Russia to weaponize the flow of illegal sub-Saharan migration to Africa as a tool for blackmailing Europe. According to unnamed British intelligence officials, this amounted to Russia turning Libya into a "new Syria".
The Russian Embassy in London on 09 October 2018 refuted reports claiming that Moscow was plotting to get control over European immigration routes in Libya and establish a stronghold against the West. "This publication has nothing to do with reality. We are treating it as a new attempt to shift the responsibility for the ruined country and destroyed lives of millions of Libyans on Russia which had no relation to the 2011 NATO military intervention which grossly violated the whole range of UN Security Council resolutions," a representative of the embassy told reporters.
After Syria, Russia focused its attention on Libya by supporting mercenaries and sending weapons to Khalifa Haftar. Russia engaged in Libyan politics by supporting Khalifa Haftar, supplying him with mercenaries and weaponry. Haftar leads the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA), which controls the eastern part of the country.
According to The Telegraph, Russia's largest military contractor Wagner Group has been sending mercenaries to help Haftar’s forces in Benghazi. Wegner is also supporting the LNA with tanks, artillery, drones, and ammunition. Russian support to Haftar is not only restricted to Wagner, there are hundreds of other mercenaries in eastern Libya taking part in LNA’s operations.
In video footage published by Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta, Putin's close aide, also known as ‘Putin's chef', Yevgeny Prigozhin, participated in talks between Haftar and Russian military officials. Prigozhin was reportedly representing the Wagner Group. He was sanctioned by the United States for leading an online campaign to intervene in the US presidential elections in 2016.
By providing both logistical and military assistance to Haftar, Moscow is trying to expand its presence in Africa. Russia's direct engagement in the Libyan civil war was criticised by the top general of US military operations in Africa on February 7.
"By employing oligarch-funded, quasi-mercenary military advisors, particularly in countries where leaders seek unchallenged autocratic rule, Russian interests gain access to natural resources on favourable terms," said General Thomas Waldhauser, Commander of Africa Command (AFRICOM). "They want to have influence on the continent,” Waldhauser commented in reference to Russian activities in the region.
History
Libya remained an Italian possession administered by Britain and France, but at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 the Allies — Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States — agreed that the Italian colonies seized during the war should not be returned to Italy.
The Soviet Union proposed separate provincial trusteeships, claiming Tripolitania for itself and assigning Fezzan to France and Cyrenaica to Britain. The question of Soviet custody of Tripolitania arose immediately after the end of the war with Japan. When giving a directive to Molotov on September 16, 1945 at a session of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London, Stalin explicitly stated that “we should press the other side of the matter, that the Americans in San Francisco promised us to support our demands for receiving trust territories. I mean the letter of Stettinius. This argument must be set convex. ” In response to such an agreement, Stalin was ready to limit the Soviet naval presence in Tripolitania.
However, going against the previously reached agreements, the United States and Britain at the London ministerial meeting proposed only a variant of joint allies over Libya, Eritrea and Italian Somalia. The direct management of these territories was to be carried out by a specific person appointed by the allies. Representatives of the United States and Britain also demanded to justify the rights of the USSR to custody of Tripolitania. Interestingly, in this connection, Molotov noted that “the USSR has considerable experience in the practical resolution of the national question. This experience could be usefully applied in Tripolitania.” In addition, he referred to the need to create favorable conditions for navigation for the Soviet courts in the Mediterranean.
The United States suggested a trusteeship for the whole country under control of the United Nations (UN), whose charter had become effective in October 1945, to prepare it for self-government. France, seeing no end to the discussions, advocated the return of the territory to Italy. To break the impasse, Britain finally recommended immediate independence for Libya.
Libya forged close ties with France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and established full diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1955, but declined a Soviet offer of economic aid. Qadhafi's avowed anticommunist stance was pragmatic. Although he refused to grant bases to the Soviet Union, he viewed the latter as an excellent source of sophisticated weaponry. He also relied upon the countries of Eastern Europe for military and technical advisers and especially for assistance in the field of internal security. He used severe measures, however, in suppressing domestic communism.
Libya sought to foster pan-Arabism and Islamic and Third World solidarity. Initially, Libya advocated positive neutrality, but, for pragmatic reasons, soon gravitated toward a close relationship with the Soviet Union. Concurrently, Libya's interpretation of the North-South dimension of global politics emphasized the division between industrialized, resource-consuming nations and underdeveloped resource producers, a division that, in Qadhafi' s view, overshadowed the East-West dichotomy.
During the early years of Qadhafi's regime, Libya pursued a genuinely nonaligned policy. Qadhafi perceived Soviet imperialism to be as great a threat to Libya in the politico-economic sphere as Western hegemony. Furthermore, communism's atheism was antithetical to Qadhafi's religious beliefs. Qadhafi approved of the 1972 Egyptian expulsion of Soviet advisers and condemned the fifteen-year Iraqi-Soviet friendship pact signed the same year.
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union, anticipating potential benefits from cultivating the newly established regime in Tripoli, quickly extended recognition three days after the coup. Notwithstanding the RCC's suppression of local communist elements and its strident anticommunist rhetoric, the Soviets viewed with satisfaction the regime's gradually increasing anti-Western orientation. After it was obliged to withdraw Soviet personnel from Egypt in 1972, the Soviet Union's interest in Libya heightened significantly. When the Western powers stopped selling arms to Libya in 1974, the first Soviet arms sale to Qadhafi was concluded in December of that year.
A major arms deal was concluded between Libya and the Soviet Union in 1975, costly enough that it apparently necessitated reductions in spending on social welfare and economic development. However, Libya denied reports in the Egyptian press and elsewhere that the agreement granted the Soviet Union military bases on Libyan territory. As of 1987, these denials appeared to have been truthful, although reportedly around 3,500 Soviet and East European military advisers were stationed in Libya. Libya's arms purchases, which by 1987 had far exceeded the needs of its small armed forces, led some observers to conclude that Libya was serving as an entrepot for weapons destined for other points in Africa in which the Soviet Union was involved. But Libya's military debt to Moscow, estimated in 1986 at US$4 to US$6 billion, continued to be a source of difficulty in bilateral relations.
Libya also has negotiated numerous economic, commercial, and cultural agreements with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Agreements involving the exchange of Libyan oil for technical expertise and equipment have been made with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and Yugoslavia. East European countries also have contributed a significant number of medical personnel to Libya's health care program. In addition, the East Germans have played a key role in the late 1970s and 1980s in Libya's domestic intelligence field. Libya also had economic agreements with Romania but ties had been strained because of the latter' s relatively cordial relationship with Israel.
Libyan-Soviet relations improved during the 1980s because both countries opposed the American-sponsored Middle East peace process. The Soviet Union was opposed primarily because of its lack of a role in the negotiations, but Libya considered the 1978 Camp David accords as a betrayal of long-standing Arab and Palestinian aspirations. In view of the wide ideological gulf and policy differences between the two nations, the Soviet-Libyan relationship has been based primarily on mutual self-interest. Libya needed a source of arms and a counterbalance to the growing United States- Egyptian alliance. For the Soviet Union, Libya was an important source of hard currency (it was estimated that Libyan weapons purchases in 1980 represented 10 percent of Soviet hard-currency earnings), an irritant to its Western superpower rival, and a potentially useful destabilizer of the regional status quo.
Although the Libyan-Soviet relationship continued to be close in the 1980s, Qadhafi was far too independent to be a submissive protege, despite his dependence on Moscow for military hardware. Instead, he insisted on following his own vision in domestic and international affairs. Many of his beliefs conflicted with Soviet doc- trines. For example, Qadhafi 's Third Universal Theory conflicted with the Marxist tenets of class warfare and the vanguard role of the proletariat.
The lack of effective Soviet support to Libya during and after the United States raid in April 1986 underlined Moscow's reluctance to risk a confrontation with Washington by supporting Qadhafi too strongly. It was reported that the Soviets withheld vital intelligence information from Libya during the confrontation in the Gulf of Sidra. Moscow, however, reportedly was embarrassed by the ineffectiveness of Libya's Soviet-supplied air defenses.
Apparently seeking to balance perceptions of overtures to the U.S. and Italy, In October 31 - November 2, 2008 Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi conducted a five-day visit to Russia, Belarus and Kiev. This was his first trip to Moscow since 1985 during a five-day, three-country tour of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Expectations that major agreements for large military equipment sales, gas exports and an "OPEC for natural gas" appeared to have been inflated - al-Qadhafi left Moscow with a framework agreement for civilian nuclear cooperation and potential defense purchases in the future.
Rhetoric for the visit was grandiose, with much made of Russian-Libyan agreement on "strengthening the foundations of a multi-polar world and political settlement of conflict situations". Russian newspaper Russkiy Kommersant - the media organ in which Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, son and putative heir of Muammar al-Qadhafi previewed his announcement in mid-August of his intention to withdraw from politics - also reported at the outset of the visit that Tripoli would offer Russia the right to establish a naval base in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
Libya's relationship with Russia has never been genuinely warm. Libyans believe Russians are too dour and are not trustworthy.
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