Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the rebel leader who controls Libya’s oil-rich east, recently declared he has a popular mandate to rule all of the North African nation, a move that may give Russia the upper hand if he can succeed in taking Tripoli amid nearly a decade's worth of sectarian strife, EDNews.net reports citing Washington Examiner.

In the disarray since dictator Muammar Qaddafi was killed in 2011, a civil war has raged across Libya, and ISIS remnants have secured a tenuous footing in the south. But more troubling, say U.S. Africa Command officials, is that Russia has inserted a paramilitary group to support Haftar and position itself on the southern flank of NATO.

“They're acting out on U.S. strategic interests in North Africa, but at the same time doing it at a low cost, and if they mess up, then the Kremlin has plausible deniability,” an AFRICOM defense official told the Washington Examiner on Monday.

“They are likely banking on that if they come out on the winning side, that they'll have access to lucrative port and mineral extraction deals, as well as have influence over a future government of Libya,” he added.

A senior defense official at U.S. Africa Command explained that Russia could benefit from a whole host of economic and geopolitical advantages by siding with a successful Haftar.

“It’s really about access in Libya for Russia, having access to the ports, to the oil, having a reason to be in the Eastern Med.,” the official told the Washington Examiner by phone from the command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

“When we talk about Russia, we have to be specific that it's really the military contractors from Russia, the Wagner Group are there, and it's really not the Russian government, the Russian military, that is in Libya,” he clarified. “When Russia is pressed by the United Nations on their influence and impact in Libya, they're quick to say that they are not really present there.”

“There have been reports that they are people who are sharpshooters,” she said of the elite Wagner mercenaries operating on behalf of Haftar in Libya. “[They] have really been the pointy end of the stick, making a big difference in what Haftar is able to do.”

Marten said the Wagner Group, which was started by former Russian GRU military spy and Putin associate Dmitry Utkin, are reportedly engaged in training and may be protecting oil fields.

“Libya is certainly a source of a lot of oil, a lot of that oil is located in locations where Haftar's troops are based,” she said. “So, if we're looking at an underlying Russian economic interest, it may end up being similar to what appears to be the underlying economic interest in Syria. It's petroleum.”

Another AFRICOM defense official told the Washington Examiner that the Russian private military contractor has been in Libya and other parts of the African continent since early 2018. In one report, Saudi Arabia financed more than 2,000 Wagner mercenaries in a failed attempt by Haftar to take Tripoli in late 2019.

“The command sees Russia increasingly using private military contractors for military training and security assistance, which offers Moscow greater flexibility to achieve its geopolitical and economic goals,” AFRICOM Navy Lieut. Christina Gibson told the Washington Examiner in a statement.