A consignment of Russian weapons arrives in Libya

Russia has sent a consignment of military vehicles to Libya, to the eastern port of Tobruk. The cargo ships Anastasiia and Yuriy Arshenevskiy, escorted by the Russian Navy’s landing ship Aleksandr Shabalin, docked on Monday, unloading dozens of armoured vehicles used for troop transport and mine clearance. Two X accounts that compile open-source intelligence – Sonarrow and GeoInsider – have obtained satellite images revealing the scale of the shipment, which includes Ural and Tornado-U vehicles. Their final destination is unknown. Sources at Il Foglio say that a month ago the United Arab Emirates reportedly purchased military equipment from the Russians to be delivered to Haftar in anticipation of a possible armed conflict with western Libya, should the recent American plan to unify the country fail. Alternatively, the shipment may have stopped over in Libya before heading to Mali and Niger, where Russian mercenaries from the Africa Corps are facing difficulties. Almost all Russian bases in Libya have undergone expansion work on runways and hangars since 2023, when the fall of the Assad regime in Syria limited the operational capacity of Tartus, Moscow’s main port of call in the Mediterranean. Since then, the strategic importance of Tobruk has grown.

Western allies have been monitoring the delivery since the convoy set off from Baltiysk, in the Kaliningrad exclave. On 10 September, an Italian P-72A reconnaissance flight tracked by the Itamilradar website followed the ships in the Mediterranean and, on Monday, whilst the Anastasiia was unloading the vehicles, a Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis II – used by the Americans for intelligence-gathering operations and having taken off from the NATO base in Constanța, Romania – flew over Tobruk for an extended period.

This latest delivery of Russian weapons comes at a time when the presence of Ukrainian trainers in Africa is increasingly under discussion, albeit with unclear details. Whilst the convoy was already sailing through the Mediterranean on 7 September, Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of Staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky, published photos of Ukrainian trainers in desert areas alongside African fighters. In the post, Budanov asserted Kyiv’s military commitment against the Russians outside the Ukrainian front line, and for the first time a member of the government admitted that Ukrainian military personnel are deployed in Africa against the Russians. Then, on 12 September, CNN published an investigation in which several Ukrainian trainers confirmed they were operating in Libya, Mali and Sudan. A drone pilot stated that in Libya they operate out of Misrata and from there attack ships belonging to the Russian ‘shadow fleet’. There is no shortage of precedents. On 3 March, the Russian gas tanker Arctic Metagaz was struck by a naval drone – possibly launched from Misrata itself – whilst sailing 150 nautical miles south-east of Malta. The damage to the ship’s hull – likely caused by a Magura drone – left little room for doubt as to Ukraine’s involvement.

On 7 September, the same day that Budanov published the photos of Ukrainian soldiers in Africa, a vessel from the Russian ‘shadow fleet’, the Lady Mariia, was attacked by a swarm of drones whilst sailing 50 nautical miles east of Malta, between Crete and eastern Libya. The vessel is subject to sanctions and is used to transport Iranian weapons to Russia. Following the Qendil, which was struck in December 2025, and the Arctic Metagaz, this was the third Russian target to be attacked outside the Black Sea. Footage of the attack was released by the Russian journalist, naturalised Ukrainian, Alexander Nevzorov, and shows ten explosions on the ship’s deck; however, despite the damage, the Lady Mariia continued its journey to Port Said in Egypt. “The presence of Ukrainian trainers in Libya is certain,” a Western source confirmed to Il Foglio. “What their priorities are, who they are working for, whether they are involved in the war against the Russians or whether they are, instead, arms traffickers is difficult to ascertain.” A passage from a confidential UN report on the attack on the Qendil, which Il Foglio has seen, highlights the particular emphasis placed by some media outlets on Libya’s involvement. “Some frame the event as having taken place ‘off the coast of Libya’ – despite the location being in international waters – whilst other accounts have linked it to the island of Crete”. The hypothesis that the Ukrainians have other bases in the Mediterranean could be confirmed by the fact that last May, fishermen found a Ukrainian Magura drone moored in a harbour on the Ionian island of Lefkada. Whilst rumours of Kyiv offering aid to the Tripoli government are recurrent, it is also true that Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabaiba has consistently denied them. One fact, however, is that on 18 April, following the attack on the Arctic Metagaz, Dabaiba met Sergei Lavrov in Turkey. “I appreciate Tripoli’s balanced and neutral stance,” the Russian Foreign Minister had said.