A recent Pentagon report indicates that the African continent is currently the focus of Moscow’s interest, as part of its strategy to compete with the influence of the United States and its European allies. According to the report, Moscow’s Africa policy has increased considerably since Russia’s ‘private contingent’ in Africa was placed under the direct responsibility of the Russian Defence Ministry and intelligence services following the death of Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

At the end of 2023, Ned Price, the spokesman for the US Secretary of State, accused Moscow of using Libya as an “essential base for the deployment of its African contingent”.

Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine and Syria has not prevented Moscow from continuing to deploy forces and military equipment on a massive scale in the regions controlled by Marshal Haftar, in the east and south of Libya. At the end of May, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Evkurov visited these regions for the fifth time since the summer of 2023 and met with Marshal Haftar. Three weeks earlier, Marshal Haftar’s son, Khaled, had visited Moscow for talks with the Deputy Foreign Minister for the Middle East and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov, on strengthening Russia’s military presence in Libya.

Since the beginning of the year, no fewer than five sea rotations have unloaded soldiers and military equipment at the port of Tobruk, as part of what the Pentagon calls the “Libyan Express”, a sea route linking the Syrian port of Tartous and the Libyan port of Tobruk. The ships mobilised for these convoys are escorted by a corvette and are said to come from Russian ports in the Baltic and the North.