Kremlin-backed mercenaries “fuel the conflict” in Libya as Russia seeks to gain influence across the Mediterranean basin, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The United States is working actively with allies and partners in the Eastern Mediterranean to promote greater stability, security, and prosperity,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday. “Russia continues to threaten Mediterranean stability using a variety of techniques to spread disinformation, undermine national sovereignty, and sow chaos, conflict, and division within countries throughout the region,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo was responding to a recent broadside from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who accused the U.S. and European allies of creating ungoverned spaces in the region by playing “irresponsible political games.” The dispute shifts the focus of a standard argument between Washington and Moscow from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, which has developed once again into a theat of geopolitical rivalry.
“Unfortunately, the rich unifying potential of the Mediterranean is not being used right now, essentially,” Lavrov told the Rome Mediterranean Dialogues, per a state media translation of his remarks. “This is a very high, unacceptable price for the irresponsible political games of Washington and its European allies, who decided to test the unipolar model of world order on the nations of the Middle East and North Africa, imposing recipes for development that ignore the values of these countries and nations.”
The Italian Foreign Ministry convened the forum with NATO and neighboring states virtually, against a backdrop of maritime disputes between NATO members Turkey and Greece and Russia’s entrenchment in Syria and Libya.
“Washington cannot remain disengaged for much longer before Russian and Turkish actions further destabilize the region,” Foundations for Defense of Democracies analysts observe in a newly-released report. “Turkey’s new interventionism, in particular, raises grave concerns because it has relied on local Islamist proxies and increasingly on surrogate forces recruited from Islamist militias that have been fighting in Syria. Exporting these groups to Libya has intensified the conflict there.”
Russia has used a similar tactic in Libya, just as it did in Syria. “In Libya, Russia supported an assault on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, killing civilians and undermining the U.N.’s efforts to bring peace to the country … and via its proxy … fuels the conflict,” Pompeo said.
