Russia’s move to reinforce its military base in eastern Libya after the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria is facing resistance from the country’s UN-backed government.
The prime minister of the Tripoli-based government, Abdul Hamid Dabaiba, said he rejected any attempt to turn Libya into a centre for major-power conflicts, stressing that the country would not be a platform for settling international scores.
“We have concerns about moving international conflicts to Libya, and that it will become a battlefield between countries,” Dabaiba said.
Libya has endured years of conflict since the 2011 Nato-backed uprising ended dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year reign. The country remains divided between the UN-recognised government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, backed by military leader Khalifa Haftar.
Reports in recent days have indicated Russian forces were transferring military equipment from Syria’s Tartus naval base and Hmeimim airbase to eastern Libya, where the rival administration has received Russian support for years.
Dabaiba said his government would not allow the transfer of Russian weapons to Libya, warning that it would only complicate Libya’s internal crisis further. He added that “no one with an ounce of patriotism wants a foreign power to impose its hegemony and authority on the country and the people”.
Dabaiba said he had been in touch with the Russian ambassador to Libya to demand an explanation.
Russia’s bases in western Syria have been crucial to its ability to project power in the Mediterranean and north Africa. Moscow has been negotiating with Syria’s new leaders to retain them, but no agreement on the leases has been made.
Jalel Harchaoui, associate fellow at the defence thinktank RUSI, described Dabaiba’s remarks as a “watershed moment”, adding: “Just him saying those words is deeply problematic to Russia because part of the Russian doctrine in the Middle East is never to be perceived as being completely 100% on one side against the other.
“So Russia was supposed to be this magical actor that was basically eliciting the active approval of both sides of the Libyan crisis. And all of that is gone.”
Dabaiba ’s intervention, he said, may reflect that “he feels this is the time to look like a good guy to the Americans, because he is under pressure on many fronts”.
The US has started to impose unprecedented economic pressure on the main Libyan actors over corruption.
The new head of the Libyan Central Bank, Naji Issa, revealed in a letter this week to the Libyan national audit bureau that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with the support of the US Treasury, has said it will suspend all dollar exchange transactions with the bank until an independent auditor, specialising in combating money-laundering and terrorist financing, is appointed to oversee all transactions.
The Federal Reserve has been putting pressure on the Central Bank partly after the Libyan National Oil Corporation admitted that Libya finished 2023 with only $14bn (£11bn) worth of income from the sale of 1.2m barrels a day of crude oil, leaving about $9bn missing, or spent on fuel for crude oil swaps.
Harchaoui said “The letter shows the Americans are worried about what the hell is happening. So they need an audit, and they need the Libyans to pay for that audit.”
Libyan officials said the audit is likely to reveal evidence of the oil smuggling in the east, and the deep financial connections with Russia, and so open the path to impose sanctions on the key figures involved.
Harchaoui said it was incontrovertible that, since the fall of Assad earlier this month, Russian cargo planes have made several flights to the Libyan al-Khadim base east of Benghazi, including two from Belarus. There have also been flights from Moscow to Libya which flew over Turkish airspace.
Harchaoui said, regardless of whether the new government in Damascus completely throws Russia out of Syria, the value of the bases to Russia would change.
“The environment in Syria, for Russia, has become more hostile, more uncertain, more precarious and more costly,” he said.
“The level of intelligence-sharing that existed between the Assad regime and Russia, necessary for Russia to maintain its own military presence – that’s gone. Maybe the new government will promise something equivalent, but it could never be at the same level of comfort as before.”
He said Haftar was obsessed with the need for Russian air defences to avoid a repeat of the attacks on his forces in 2020, when they were decimated by Turkish-supplied drones.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian cargo planes that flew to Libya transported advanced air defence equipment, including radars for the S-400 and S-300 air defence systems
Russia had this year already increased its footprint in Libya, bringing more armoured vehicles, military trucks, equipment in general and personnel. The number of troops had risen to about 1,200-1,500 from about 900 last year.
