• Trump’s national security team is seeking to blunt Russian influence in the Mediterranean and in Africa by engaging eastern Libya warlord Khalifa Haftar, despite his well-documented human rights abuses.
• Russia’s steady expansion of forces in Haftar-controlled territory positions Moscow to help anti-Western military governments in Africa.
• Trump officials conducted a show of force in Libya in February to try to weaken Haftar’s ties to the Kremlin.
• Haftar’s opponents fear he will use aid from both Washington and Moscow to try to consolidate control over the whole country.

The fall of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi in 2011 left Libya divided between two rival administrations, opening the country to interference by major powers seeking geopolitical advantage. Fourteen years after Qadhafi’s collapse, big power rivalry in Libya is only escalating, not diminishing, and in the process, feeding the ambitions of Libya’s divided leaders. A U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, reliant on Islamist and other militias, is supported primarily by Türkiye, which looks to Tripoli to help it prevent rival powers from encroaching on its influence in the eastern Mediterranean.

Contending for control over Libya is a Benghazi-based parliament, controlled by allies of strongman Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) militia. For many years, shunned by the U.S. and European powers because of his brutal repression of Islamists and other dissidents, Haftar built ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and several regional authoritarians, including Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. Haftar’s partners look to Libya as a springboard to advance their interests in Africa and the Mediterranean. The U.S. and its European partners backed U.N. efforts to unify the Libyan political structure, but Libya was not a priority for the first Trump administration or for the early years of the Biden administration. There was little incentive for U.S. officials to advocate engagement with Haftar, whose human rights record and failed military aggression against Tripoli in 2019 made him anathema in Washington.

Libya assumed a more prominent place on the U.S. and European policy agenda following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which heightened pre-existing concerns about Russian gains not only in Libya but elsewhere in the region. Western leaders feared that Russia intended to use its expanding military presence on the African continent as leverage against Europe and to advance Putin’s broader effort to undermine the West globally. Military coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, one in Burkina Faso in 2022, and in Niger in 2023 resulted in the expulsion of U.S., French, and other Western forces, and an influx of Russian forces. The Russian buildup was spearheaded by the Wagner Private Military Corporation, which evolved, following the death of its rebellious founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, into what is now the “Africa Corps.” U.S. and French counterterrorism officials viewed the net effect of Russia’s growing influence as a major threat to their efforts to combat the African affiliates of the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Qaeda and to supplies of critical minerals from several countries in Africa.

In Libya, U.S. and European strategists watched with some alarm as Russia steadily expanded its military presence in Haftar-controlled territory. During 2023-2024, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov visited Haftar in Benghazi five times, and, in June 2024, two Russian destroyers visited the Haftar-controlled Tobruk Naval Base. The warships’ visit was billed as a training mission but was likely a continuation of the delivery of artillery to the LNA for potential use against its rivals in Tripoli or for export to anti-Western military forces in neighboring countries. By August 2024, there were a reported 2,000 – 2,500 Africa Corps personnel deployed at various military sites in Libya. Russia’s buildup in Libya accelerated after the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in early December, which brought to power an Islamist government hostile to Assad’s partners and forced Russia to evacuate most of its forces based there. Russia has redeployed a large proportion of those military assets to LNA-controlled locations in Libya. One expert assesses that the number of Russians stationed at Libya’s Brak al-Shati airbase has increased from 300 to approximately 450 since the Assad regime collapsed.

The U.S. calculation it needed to counter these Russian geopolitical gains caused Washington to rethink its isolation of Haftar. A May 2024 NATO experts report outlining NATO’s first official “Southern Strategy” set the stage for working with figures such as Haftar by suggesting cooperation with “non-accountable southern partners” without requiring them to adopt European values. U.S. officials began to downplay Haftar’s drawbacks and view him as a like-minded potential partner against violent Islamist organizations. Some officials argued that engagement with Haftar might move him out of Moscow’s orbit and blunt the Kremlin’s regional ambitions. In August 2024, the commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), General Michael Langley, met with Haftar in Benghazi, as publicly announced by the U.S. Embassy in Libya. In September, high-ranking Pentagon official Celeste Wallander and the deputy AFRICOM commander held a follow-up meeting with Haftar in Libya and praised the LNA for “significant contributions to maintaining stability and promoting unity in Libya.” According to readouts of the meeting, she also highlighted “the importance of Libya’s security forces in ensuring the country’s protection against terrorism and external threats.”

The Trump administration, which took office as Russia was redeploying forces from Syria to Libya, articulated no specific policy toward Libya. But, the Trump team continued the efforts of its predecessors to try to reorient Haftar’s allegiances away from the Kremlin, even as Trump sought to reengage with Putin in an effort to settle the Ukraine war. In early February, Lt. Gen. John W. Brennan, Deputy AFRICOM commander, met with leaders of major Libyan military institutions, including Haftar as well as military leaders under Tripoli’s authority, “to promote increased security cooperation between the United States and Libya.” Some of the meetings took place in Sirte, a city where U.S. support helped local forces defeat a challenge from ISIS in 2016. The U.S. military visit was also intended to foster greater military unification and cooperation efforts between pro-Haftar and pro-Tripoli elements “through face-to-face engagements and training that benefits both sides, contributing to Libyan efforts to overcome divisions and foster unity.” Included in the meetings was LNA Ground Forces Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Saddam Haftar, the most prominent Haftar son, who is believed to advocate closer ties to the U.S. and distance from the Kremlin. He reportedly visited the United States in 2024. Yet, Trump critics immediately noted that a December 2022 Amnesty International report excoriated Saddam Haftar for war crimes, human rights abuses, and corruption committed by the Tariq Ben Zeyad (TBZ) Brigade unit of the LNA under his command.

In late February, the Trump Pentagon further elevated its engagement with the LNA by sending two B-52 Stratofortress bombers from their U.S. bases to conduct a joint training exercise with Libyan military air controllers near Sirte on February 26. Defense News, a U.S. outlet associated with the Defense Department, characterized the U.S. show of force as a deliberate attempt to tempt Haftar and his sons and other associates to eject the Russian troops stationed in LNA bases in the country. The B-52 mission came after Haftar, Saddam Haftar, and another son, Khaled, returned from a visit to Russia’s close ally Belarus, and meetings with its authoritarian pro-Putin leader, Aleksander Lukashenko. The visit – publicly described as “establishing strategic partnerships, particularly in Belarus’s industrial and agricultural sectors” – was taken in Washington as a sign that Haftar remained closely aligned with Moscow. U.S. officials judged that peeling Haftar out of the Kremlin’s orbit would require additional U.S. steps, including demonstrating the unique role U.S. forces can play in securing the region. The B-52 exercise was conducted in line with a January 2025 decision by the U.N. Security Council to provide an exemption to the U.N. arms embargo on Libya for “technical assistance or training provided by Member States to Libyan security forces intended solely to promote the process of Libyan military and security institutions’ reunification.”

Critics of the Trump approach toward Libya argue the outreach to Haftar might have unintended consequences. Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst at the RUSI think tank in London, expressed to Defense News skepticism Haftar will ever break with Moscow, telling the outlet “Haftar tells the U.S. he would work with them but says Russia gives him air defenses and military training. The U.S. tells him it would give him more if only he would distance himself from Russia.” Others note that Haftar, emboldened by engagement with both Washington and Moscow, might abandon the U.N.-led unification process and initiate another push to capture western Libya. In August 2024, Major General Ahmed Al-Mismari, Haftar’s lead spokesman, denied that an LNA deployment toward Libya’s border with Algeria represented a prelude to armed action against Tripoli. He explained that the developments in neighboring countries, particularly in Mali and Niger, necessitated the dispatch of reinforcements to military zones where the LNA is stationed, with the objective of securing Libya’s borders.