The presence of Russian warships in Libya, reported a few days ago, should not be surprising according to Pietro Batacchi, director of Rid – Italian defense magazine, the main magazine in the sector in Italy. “The Russians’ objective is to open a naval base in Benghazi or in any case to find a foothold in the North African country. Having access to the ‘warm sea’ represents one of the traditional elements of Russian foreign policy”, says the expert to Adnkronos, commenting on the visit of the cruiser ‘Varyag’ and the frigate ‘Admiral Shbashnikov’ to the naval base of Tobruk, in Cyrenaica.
The Russian strategy
Are relations between Putin and General Haftar intensifying? “The Soviet Navy had a more or less fixed presence in Libya. Nothing changes from a foreign policy point of view, there is no difference in this between Putin’s Russia and Brezhnev’s USSR”, observes Batacchi. Russia, explains the director of the Rid magazine, “is a great power but has a ‘blockade’, in the sense that it is bound by the cold seas of the North, which are frozen for most of the year, and therefore ‘forced’ to passage from the Bosphorus, requires access to the warm sea, the Mediterranean”.
The role of NATO
For Batacchi, the increase in Russian presence in the Cyrenaica region is “an objective fact”: “After the 2015 Sochi summit, Africa has become one of the main directions of Russian foreign policy”. And what countermeasures is the Atlantic Alliance adopting? “NATO monitors this strong presence in the Mediterranean. Not from now, but since 2015, the contours of a competition between the Russian fleet and the NATO Navy fleet are emerging. In this context – replies the expert – the main role is played by the Italian Navy. In recent years the United States has preferred to concentrate on the Asia-Pacific theater, and for this reason has delegated many of the tasks to be carried out in the Mediterranean to the allies. The first of these allies is clearly Italy”.
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