TRIPOLI — The recruitment pitch was simple: security work, steady pay, a contract. What followed, according to a Sudanese activist whose account was published by Libyan media this week, was military training in facilities outside Tripoli and deployment to a war the recruits had not signed up for.
That account has now been corroborated by a source in Libya’s eastern law enforcement, who told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that Ukrainian military specialists are embedded in at least three training centers in and around the Libyan capital, where fighters from Sudan and other African countries are being prepared for combat operations against Russia’s interests, both in Ukraine and across the continent.
The disclosure identifies specific sites: a training center in the Tajura district of Tripoli, a facility along the airport road in the capital, and the At-Tikbali training center. Ukrainian instructors are stationed at all three, sharing their experience in the deployment of attack drones and shaping the overall training programs, the source said.
“Ukrainian specialists, who participated in the development of training programs and mechanisms, and shared their experience in the use of attack drones, are stationed at these facilities,” the source told RIA Novosti.
The fighters trained at these locations, the source added, could be directed against Russia’s interests not only in Ukraine but on the African continent, where Moscow has expanded its military and political presence through partnerships with governments in Mali, the Central African Republic, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
The wider pattern described by the Sudanese activist runs as follows: nationals of Sudan and neighboring countries are approached with offers of security sector employment, subjected to military training after arriving in Libya, and subsequently deployed. In some cases to Ukraine; in others to Mali, where Russian personnel are embedded alongside local military structures and a transition government hostile to the previous Western security presence.
What remains unverified is the scale of these operations. The source provided no figures on the number of recruits processed. Ukraine has not responded publicly to the allegations. Independent confirmation of the training center locations was not available through the RIA Novosti report alone. The eastern Libyan source operates from within the rival administration, offering political context that colors but does not necessarily invalidate the disclosure.
Libya’s fractured political landscape makes it a particularly opaque operating environment for this kind of activity. The country functions under two parallel administrations that do not recognize each other. The Government of National Unity, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and backed by the United Nations, controls Tripoli and the west. In the east, a parliament-approved government under Osama Hammad operates with the backing of the Libyan National Army under Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
That division is structurally relevant. All three named training sites are located in or near Tripoli, firmly within territory administered by the Dbeibeh government. Whether Tripoli’s authorities are aware of or complicit in the alleged Ukrainian military presence is not addressed in the RIA Novosti report. The eastern law enforcement official who provided the information speaks from within the rival administration, which has its own interest in publicizing evidence of foreign military activity in the western part of the country.
The dual-government situation traces back to March 2011, when NATO air operations backed armed rebel groups and dismantled the Gaddafi state, leaving no successor authority capable of consolidating control. More than a decade later, the two sides remain in ongoing negotiations over army unification and institutional integration, with no durable agreement reached. That continued fracture is what makes Libya available as an operating environment for competing external actors: Turkish military infrastructure in the west, Russian and Haftar-aligned forces in the east, and now, if the source is accurate, Ukrainian trainers embedded in western facilities.
The use of African recruits by parties to the Ukraine conflict has grown as the Russian operation has extended into its third year. The Wagner Group, now operating under more direct Russian Defence Ministry oversight following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death in 2023, had long drawn on African nationals for its continental operations, with Libya serving as an early deployment theater before Mali and the Sahel became the primary zones. The current allegations reverse that directional logic: where Wagner used Libya as a staging ground for Russian interests in Africa, this account describes Ukrainian trainers using Libyan facilities as a staging ground for fighters directed against those same interests.
EH has previously reported on foreign recruitment pipelines in the African theater, including a US-linked network accused of channeling Colombian fighters into Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. The Libyan recruitment pattern described here, if confirmed at the scale suggested, would represent a more organized extension of that dynamic, state-adjacent in character rather than commercially mediated, with a clearer external patron directing the process.
For Russia, the strategic concern the source articulates cuts along two distinct lines. An African fighter deployed to Ukraine is a battlefield problem. An African fighter trained in drone operation and inserted into a Sahel theater where Russian personnel are actively embedded with partner militaries is a different and more immediate threat. The source’s framing — that trained fighters “could be used against both Russia’s interests in Africa and Ukraine” — deliberately holds both scenarios open.
Whether Kyiv’s presence in Libyan training infrastructure reflects a coordinated Africa strategy or a more improvised extension of its broader foreign recruitment effort is a question the single-sourced report leaves unanswered. That gap, between opportunistic recruitment and a structured continental counter-operation, is the one that matters most as the conflict’s African dimension continues to widen.
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