Russia Rebuilds In MENA, Europe Pays At The Border
Introduction
Russia is quietly reconstructing its Middle Eastern and North African footprint through a blend of transactional diplomacy, strategic ambiguity, and asymmetric pressure tactics that deliberately exploit Western political constraints. Rather than relying on grand summits or overt alliance structures, Moscow is pursuing flexible, bilateral arrangements that allow it to retain relevance, access, and leverage despite sanctions and diplomatic isolation following its invasion of Ukraine. This recalibration reflects a shift from prestige-driven diplomacy to utility-driven statecraft, which is then leveraged across other domains of Russia’s asymmetric warfare.
Russia’s Morocco Pivot
After the collapse of the Russia-Arab Summit as a meaningful vehicle for regional engagement, Moscow redirected its focus toward select bilateral partnerships capable of preserving its legitimacy and access. Morocco emerged as the centerpiece of this strategy. Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita’s visit to Moscow and the establishment of the Russia Morocco Working Group marked a significant diplomatic achievement for the Kremlin, with Moscow reportedly offering expertise in energy and cybersecurity to deepen strategic cooperation. By signaling support for Morocco’s autonomy plan in Moroccan Sahara, Russia effectively neutralized a long standing pressure point that had constrained its relations with Rabat while simultaneously marginalizing the Polisario issue even within Algeria’s strategic calculus.
For Moscow, the Moroccan partnership serves several interlocking objectives. It undermines Washington’s influence among traditionally U.S.-aligned states by demonstrating that Russia remains a viable diplomatic partner even for countries deeply embedded in Western security and economic architectures. It also provides Russia with access to Africa’s western corridors, including maritime routes, logistics hubs, and mineral rich territories that are increasingly central to global supply chains. Morocco’s relative insulation from U.S. pressure further enhances its value as a gateway partner rather than a liability.
North Africa as a Portal to Eastern Europe
Beyond diplomacy, Russian networks are actively exploiting North African transit routes to advance one of Moscow’s most effective asymmetric tools: the weaponization of migration. These efforts are not improvised. Russian affiliated actors posing as travel agencies across Sub Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia are producing professional videos and promotional materials that promise safe passage, employment opportunities, and successful entry into the European Union. Migrants are reassured that border crossings are manageable and that European defenses are overstretched.
The rosy picture and the reality diverge. To advance the objective reminiscent of the Soviet era “controlled chaos”, migrants are flown in organized groups to Belarus and western Russia, then transported to border zones under the supervision of Russian and Belarusian uniformed personnel, special operations units, and private contractors. They are instructed in methods to circumvent border security, including the use of tools to dismantle metal fencing and barbed wire or to dig tunnels under the fence.
Reports from Polish authorities indicate that some groups are supplied with lasers capable of damaging night vision equipment used by border guards. In more extreme cases, migrants are reportedly encouraged to engage in violent tactics, including throwing Molotov cocktails and bottles filled with urine and feces at the border guards or other security personnel.
The Security and Human Costs
The human cost of this strategy is significant. Many migrants are injured during attempted crossings, requiring transport to Polish hospitals at taxpayer expense. Most carry no identification documents, complicating processing and return procedures. At the peak of the crisis in 2021, Polish Border Guards detected more than 37,000 attempted crossings. Although the intensity of encounters has declined, the annual rate is still higher (roughly 30,000) than the pre-peak rate and the underlying infrastructure and recruitment pipelines remain intact, continuing to drain resources as well as testing European defenses. The migrants are now also recruited via social media platforms and trained to commit acts of sabotage such as arson upon reaching European countries.
The situation remains serious enough that Germany has now deployed troops to fortify NATO’s eastern flank, underscoring that the migration crisis is no longer viewed as a localized Polish issue but as a systemic security challenge. While PM Donald Tusk’s government succeeded in securing a temporary one-year dispensation from EU refugee legal frameworks, this measure merely buys time.
The structural problem remains unresolved, and Russia retains the ability to reactivate or increase pressure at will.
Russia’s Gulf Rapprochement
Parallel to these operations, Moscow is deepening engagement with Gulf states through energy diplomacy and security cooperation. The Saudi-Russian Investment and Business Forum, anchored around energy and critical minerals deals, reflects Moscow’s effort to retain influence within global energy markets despite sanctions. Coordination with Saudi Arabia allows Russia to bypass various restrictions, to shape pricing dynamics, and to maintain relevance as an indispensable energy actor. At the latest summit, which took place shortly after the Crown Prince’s US visit, Russia secured 90 day visa free travel for both tourists and business visitors.
Such an arrangement will also allow Russian stakeholders to meet their American counterparts, including affiliates and partners of the Trump Organization, unobtrusively in a secure and discreet environment. Driving this engagement are private business concerns that circumvent US channels, but still risk complaints of conflicts of interest and pushback from Congressional Russia hawks within the Republican party and Democrats. Holding meetings in the United States, such as the recent waiving of sanctions that allowed Krill Dmitriev to meet and even wake-surf in Miami, attract too much negative publicity. At the same time, Moscow is expanding cooperation with Qatar in cybersecurity and policing, as well as pursuing natural gas coordination along with Iran, reinforcing a triangular energy and security architecture that complicates Western efforts to isolate Russia.
The United Arab Emirates plays a particularly important role in this strategy.
As a global financial hub with a pragmatic and accommodating foreign policy posture, the UAE provides Moscow with channels to move capital, conduct transactions, and maintain diplomatic flexibility. These relationships collectively weaken OPEC Plus discipline when it suits Russian interests while preserving enough cooperation to avoid overt confrontation.
Kremlin Embraces Multilateralism
Russia’s engagement with Iran remains central, but it is increasingly complemented rather than defined by that relationship. Recent Saudi Chinese meetings in Iran and the reiteration of the Chinese brokered normalization framework via a new trilateral agreement have created space for Moscow to operate with greater confidence. By embedding itself within diplomatic processes, Russia reduces its exposure while benefiting from the erosion of Western dominated mediation frameworks.
This dynamic is further reinforced by Russia’s evolving posture in Syria. Following a meeting with President Ahmed Al Sharaa, Moscow has moved more openly to consolidate and to defend its military presence at Syrian bases. This shift signals that Russia no longer feels compelled to obscure its long-term intentions in Syria. Instead, it is asserting its role as a permanent security actor in the Eastern Mediterranean, capable of projecting power, gathering intelligence, and influencing regional balances.
Maintaining these bases allows Russia to support operations across the Levant, to monitor NATO movements, and to sustain logistical corridors linking the Black Sea, the Middle East, and North Africa. Retaining a strategic foothold in Syria also provides leverage over regional actors, such as Israel and Türkiye, who need to account for Russia’s entrenched presence when calibrating their own policies. For Moscow, Syria is not merely a legacy commitment of the by-gone Cold War days but a platform for regional relevance.
Taken together, these strategies reveal a coherent approach. Russia is not attempting to replace the United States as a hegemon in MENA. Instead, it is positioning itself as an unavoidable spoiler and facilitator, capable of shaping outcomes through selective cooperation, asymmetric pressure, and the exploitation of institutional weaknesses. Migration weaponization, energy diplomacy, and transactional partnerships allow Moscow to extract value disproportionate to its economic weight.
For Western policymakers, the implication is clear. Russia’s influence does not depend on formal alliances or ideological appeal. It thrives in gray zones where governance is fragmented, legal frameworks are strained, and political costs deter decisive responses. Addressing this challenge requires not only sanctions or diplomatic isolation but also resilience against hybrid tactics, coordinated border security, and a recognition that migration, energy, and regional diplomacy are now inseparable components of geopolitical competition.
Challenges for US Policy and Transatlantic Relations
The weaponized migration pressure exposes a growing contradiction in the emerging Trump era strategic posture.
The new National Security Strategy seeks to reshape Europe in the image of populist far right government-controlled states, while casting Russia as a potential transactional counterpart and focusing on illegal migration deterrence in the Western Hemisphere. Yet conditions on the Polish-Belarussian frontier and across the eastern flank demonstrate that Russia’s coercive toolkit against Europe is active, sustained, and designed to impose cumulative costs rather than achieve a single decisive confrontation. This means that waging a political war on Europe while ignoring Russia’s encroachment undercuts the US ability to project power effectively, given the risks of fragmentation and destabilization.
This tension is sharpened by the National Defense Authorization Act, which continues to allocate significant resources to European deterrence and allied readiness even as political messaging from the executive branch questions the value of European partnership. Moscow benefits when allied debates obscure the reality of ongoing pressure.
Conclusion
The same logic applies to any effort to draw Poland or other countries away from the European Union. Poland is not only a US ally but a frontline state whose border security is inseparable from EU law, funding, Schengen governance, and internal security cooperation. Russian directed migration pressure is deliberately designed to fracture European solidarity and trigger internal political crises. Encouraging Warsaw to distance itself from EU frameworks at a moment of acute stress would weaken the collective legal, financial, and political capacity Poland depends on to manage that pressure.
Russia’s current posture is best understood as persistence through leverage.
It is not rebuilding an empire, it is building friction points, survivable footholds, and transactional partnerships that collectively dilute Western pressure. The Morocco channel, Gulf engagements, Syrian basing continuity, and the Poland-Belarus pressure theater are all pieces of the same mosaic.
Russia’s MENA strategy demonstrates that isolation does not equal irrelevance. Through calculated partnerships and coercive nonmilitary tools, Moscow continues to shape regional and global dynamics, testing the limits of Western cohesion and the adaptability of international institutions in an era defined by contested sovereignty and asymmetric power. Western policy toward MENA needs to recognize that Russian influence in this space is increasingly routed through pragmatic bargains rather than ideological alignment alone. Countering it requires offering credible alternatives, not only warnings, lectures, or unwelcome political interventions.
