The Kremlin has reacted with speed the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria. As soon as the dictator fell in December 2024, Moscow lost its greatest bastion in the Middle East and with it, the control over the two jewels of its regional strategy: the Jmeimim Air Base and the Naval Base of Tartús. Both facilities had served for years as a Russian support point on the Mediterranean coast. Now, with those positions in the air, Russia has fully launched to conquer a new land: Libya.
Although none of the Libyan factions wave the Russian flag or act as a formal ally, Moscow has begun to display its chips on the board. He has sent weapons, soldiers and even money directly printed to this country in North Africa, as revealed by half Lithuanian . This maneuver does not respond to a mere opportunism: it is part of a strategic reorientation calculated to the millimeter to fill the emptiness left by Syria and guarantee a direct influence on a region that looks sideways at Europe.
Libya has been plunged into chaos. Political fragmentation and unequal control of the territory have turned the country into fertile terrain for foreign interference. The Kremlin knows and takes advantage of it. Russia not only seeks military or economic revenues; He also studies how to handle migratory flows as a pressure tool against the European Union. He has done it before, and now re -tanta the limits.
Moscow has already demonstrated in other wars – as in Ukraine or in Syria itself – its ability to move pieces in silence, rely on local actors and increase its weight in key regions without the need to place an official uniform on the ground. Libya now seems to be that new operations laboratory, a place from which you can launch signals, reinforce positions and tighten the geopolitical seams of the European continent.
