The commander of the Bundeswehr Joint Forces Operations Command Germany, Lieutenant General Bernd Schütt, warned of “increasing Russian military influence” in African countries, including Libya.
Schütt said, in a statement to the German News Agency, that Russia’s original intention in doing so is to fill the vacuum related to security policy in light of the current developments and is trying to turn the situation in its favor and ward off Western influence.
Schütt added that after the military coups that West Africa witnessed in recent years, Russia gradually expanded its influence and replaced Western and European countries in the region.
Schütt pointed out that the Russian presence “forms a land belt that can extend almost from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea,” he said.
According to Schütt, Russia is militarily active in Burkina Faso and Mali with signs of the start of military cooperation in Niger, in addition to meetings taking place at the political level in Chad. Russian forces have also been active in Libya since 2016 in the form of the Wagner Group, which participated in the war on Tripoli with Haftar in 2019.
Schütt attributed Moscow’s moves to the fact that international crisis management, national defenses, and defending allies are all linked, considering that dealing with the matter militarily represents a major challenge, not only for Germany, but for other Western allies.
