Small Wars Journal

How Vladimir Putin Got Played By a Furious Libyan General

Thu, 01/16/2020 - 8:01am

How Vladimir Putin Got Played By a Furious Libyan General by Samer Al-Atrush, Ilya Arkhipov and Selcan Hacaoglu - Bloomberg

Khalifa Haftar was expecting the Kremlin red carpet. Instead he was cooped up in a Russian Foreign Ministry reception building hoping for an audience with Vladimir Putin. In the end, the Libyan military commander lost patience and stormed out. Hours later, he left Moscow in his Dassault Falcon corporate jet bound for the Jordanian capital, Amman.

When the Russian president invited Libya’s rival leaders to sign a truce on Monday, it would appear he hadn’t factored in the legendary stubbornness of the 76-year-old Haftar. What’s more, that he felt emboldened to snub Putin is testament to how unpredictable Libya’s civil war has become.

The flash of temper, however, is only the latest confounding twist before a planned Libyan peace conference in Berlin on Sunday. Just last week, an attempt by former colonial power Italy to broker an encounter between Haftar and Fayez al-Sarraj, prime minister of the United Nations-backed Libyan government, ended with the latter canceling last minute and flying home.

Nothing is playing out as planned, or is what it seems…

Read on.