Using "shadow fleet" vessels, Russia smuggles weapons and military equipment to Libyan militants.
This was reported by Gospodarka Morska.
An ongoing Interpol investigation, which began last year, revealed that Russia uses old ships not only for smuggling sanctioned oil but also for supplying illegal weapons and military equipment to the forces of its ally, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who controls the eastern part of the divided Libya.
Interpol, tracking vessels heading to Tobruk in eastern Libya, documented arms shipments sent from Russian ports on the Black Sea. According to the international police organization’s report, part of this equipment was received by the Libyan National Army, which is under the command of Haftar and his six sons, while another part went to the Rapid Support Forces, which are fighting against government forces in the ongoing civil war in Sudan.
Russia also uses the port of Tobruk to support military juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, who hire Russian mercenaries to fight against insurgents and jihadists in the Sahel. Ports in Libya also allow Russia to control migrant routes to Europe and establish maritime operation centers along NATO’s southern flank.
Russia’s involvement in Libyan ports has increased since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December last year. The new leadership in Damascus has consistently denied Russian ships access to its former naval base in the Mediterranean port of Tartus and the Hmeimim airbase in northern Syria.
One of the vessels Russia used to transport weapons to Libya was the Barbaros — a cargo ship flagged in Cameroon, which was spotted in early 2024 as it passed through the Bosporus Strait in Turkey. The Barbaros concealed its location by changing its AIS data. This raised suspicion among Interpol investigators, who boarded the ship and discovered dozens of military trucks.
The investigation revealed that over 12 years, the Barbaros changed its name three times and was registered under 10 different flags. It was not the only ship Russia used for transporting weapons in the Mediterranean. According to documents related to the Irini operation, led by the EU’s Mediterranean naval mission (EUNAVFOR MED), which since 2020 has been tasked with enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya, Moscow used dozens of old merchant ships with unclear ownership to avoid detection while transporting weapons to Tobruk and Benghazi.
Russia’s decision to use ships like the Barbaros after the invasion of Ukraine significantly increased the number of risky vessels at sea — from a few hundred previously used by Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, to over a thousand. These ships were flagged by many African countries, including Liberia (which quickly revoked it), Comoros, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and even Eswatini — a country with no coastline at all.
