Posted on 08/26/2020 10:12:23 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Gen. Abdulhadi Dirah, the spokesman for the army's Sirte-Jufra Joint Operations Unit, said that carrying military ammunition, Ilyushin-type planes conducted five flights to Sirte and Jufra provinces on Saturday.
Carrying Bashar al-Assad regime's soldiers, two more flights were made from Syria to Benghazi, the second biggest Libyan city, which is the center of the Haftar's forces, Dirah said.
Libya has been torn by civil war since the ouster of late ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The government was founded in 2015 under a UN-led agreement, but efforts for a long-term political settlement failed due to a military offensive by forces loyal to warlord Khalifa Haftar.
The UN recognizes the government headed by al-Sarraj as the country's legitimate authority, as it has battled warlord Khalifa Haftar's militias -- with the support of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, the UAE and France -- since April 2019 in a conflict that has taken more than 1,000 lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at aa.com.tr ...
Haftar rejects GNA’s call for Libya ceasefire
LNA dismisses ceasefire announcement as ‘marketing’ stunt, says GNA is planning a Turkish-backed offensive on Sirte.
23 Aug 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/haftar-rejects-gna-call-libya-ceasefire-200823173428282.html
By backing Haftar, Russia gets control of some of Libya’s best oil fields. The cost of Russia’s intervention with mercenaries is thereby defrayed, with plenty left over for profit, bribery, and kickbacks to Putin and his cronies. The blatantly transactional nature of much of Russian foreign policy may be squalid but it is often effective.
That may be it. It also may be a way of cutting off Libyan oil production through continued mayhem in the country, keeping it off the market, to shore up the price of its own oil. That's more likely. The added kicker is to oppose Turkey to keep it isolated from its neighbors.
To add to your point, in Italy and other Mediterranean economies accustomed to using oil from Libya, Russian oil (and Russian controlled oil from Libya) can easily displace Libyan oil from other vendors. It is worth recalling that Putin’s dissertation for his law degree when the Soviet Union collapsed advocated in detail how the new Russian state should use control over oil resources to rebuild its lost strength and power.
If memory serves, LIbyan oil is some mighty fine crude, and extraction costs are lower than the post-Soviet fields, many of which are in decline. Regarding your earlier idea, that fits well with the idea of the Russians getting at the very least a cut of the Libyan oil money.
Russia these days is a gangster nation, and its foreign policy is constantly on the grift.
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