About 200 Russian mercenaries from the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group’s private military force and about 1,000 Syrians whom Russia had deployed with them to Libya have withdrawn in recent weeks, two Western officials said. Three others confirmed the reduction. About 5,000 mercenaries remain in the country on behalf of Moscow, said a growth-aware regional official. A senior Libyan official confirmed that Russia had withdrawn mercenaries from his country, but gave no details. “In the beginning it was the Syrians, not Wagner’s Russian staff, and then they became Wagner’s own staff,” said Emadeddin Badi, a Libyan expert and senior associate of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Initiative on the withdrawal. “And recently, there has been a rise in the last two weeks. “They are still there, but they are much fewer.” In recent years, the growth of Russian mercenaries has given Moscow a foothold in North and West Africa. In countries such as the Central African Republic and Mali, the Kremlin has seized on widespread resentment of the former colonial power France to bolster its influence, with Libya acting as a hub for its development on the continent. But the cost of invading Ukraine has begun to weigh on Moscow, with reports that some 200 Wagner fighters have left CAR. A fighter stands next to a wrecked car in Tripoli, Libya in 2020 © Mahmud Turkia / AFP / Getty Images Russia has limited its targets in Ukraine after failures on the battlefield. It has also suffered significant losses – believed to be much higher than the 1,351 it last acknowledged in late March. The United Kingdom announced on Tuesday that at least 15,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the first two months of the war. Two of the Western officials said that Russia initially had no intention of withdrawing any of its forces from Libya, but the decision was made after failing to make significant gains in Ukraine. The UK Department of Defense said in late March that the setbacks meant that “Russia was probably forced to prioritize Wagner’s staff over Ukraine over operations in Africa and Syria”. Three of the Western officials said Wagner fighters had been withdrawn to deploy to Ukraine, but it was unclear whether the Syrians would also be sent to Ukraine. Kiev officials said Syrian fighters had been killed along with Russians on the front lines, but two Western officials said there was still no evidence that Syrians had been deployed in Ukraine. Turkey closed its airspace to Russian military flights coming from Libya and Syria, where Russia has a large military presence, about a month ago, according to a Turkish official and a Western official, amid concerns about the transfer of fighter jets and equipment in Ukraine. “The Turks had some evidence to suggest that the Russians were moving both people and possibly equipment. [from Syria and Libya] “On the battlefield in Ukraine,” said the Western official. Turkey publicly announced the ban on Saturday. The United States has accused Evgeny Prigogine, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, of financing Wagner, which he has denied. Answering questions about the reduction of mercenaries, he again denied that he had any relations with the penalized group of mercenaries. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peshkov did not respond to a request for comment. The Kremlin first sent several thousand Wagner and Syrian mercenaries to Libya in late 2019 to help the powerful man Khalifa Haftar in his quest to overthrow the UN-recognized government. Haftar’s and Wagner’s forces lost ground and retreated to bases in eastern and southern Libya after the 2020 truce – home to much of the country’s oil reserves – maintaining a strategic presence on the south side of NATO. Analysts say the withdrawal from Libya, which is divided between rival governments, has not changed the precarious balance of power in the country. “None of the foreign actors supporting the two sides in Libya want to jeopardize the resurgent dialogue for the sake of starting a war in Libya for the sake of the other side,” said Claudia Gazzini, senior International analyst in Libya at the International Crisis Group. . Additional report by Max Seddon in Riga
