Executive Summary
Within the overlap of the Sahel and Sahara regions, the handling of the Libya-Sudan-Chad tri-border area shifted the Wagner Group’s arbitrariness, reliant on plausible deniability and personalised networks, to institutionalised control under the Africa Corps of the Russian Ministry of Defence gradually since 2023. Since all of the three bordering countries struggle with the centralised control of these frontiers, they have become a hotbed of smuggling arms and natural resources, which allows the authorities that control the area to become powerful actors that can shape all three major conflicts and their resulting informal economies. The primary risk for the governments of Chad, Sudan, and Libya is therefore the erosion of their central state’s ability to control its borders, which delegates a core function of national security to another state.
Introduction
Ever since the Russia Africa Corps (RAC) took over the Wagner Group’s military operations in 2023, the group has been directly promoting Russian interests in an increasingly volatile corridor that is the tripoint of the Libya-Sudan-Chad border. This arid, sparsely populated border territory far away from administrative centres is one of the most frequented smuggling routes in Africa. This route sees the trafficking of arms, resources, people, and money; a significant source of income and weaponry. Therefore, its supervision is crucial to any actor involved in one of the three conflict zones that surround it (Amin, 2025).
The RAC has become the official centralised military and diplomatic vehicle of the Kremlin (Manfredi Firmian, 2024). Local actors, such as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan or Khalīfa Ḥaftar’s Libyan National Army, prefer them over local guards, as they find the RAC more reliable. The Russian state’s military is, by nature, loyal to actors that are able to advance Russian interests – in other words, the national political leaders. These leaders do not need to worry about mutinies or tribal power shifts by local guards, as they have a contract with the RAC instead.
Analysis
The Russia Africa Corps has continued the Wagner Group’s legacy of offering security services to military regimes in Africa (Mohamedou, 2024). They take advantage of the turmoil in Libya using the country’s airstrips as logistical hubs to transfer troops and arms to the border region with Chad and Sudan (Otłowski, 2023). Key sites include the Port of Tobruk and the airbases of Brāk al-Shāṭi’, al-Jufrah, and al-Khādim (Manfredi Firmian, 2024).
In addition, the al-Kufrah airport of al-Jawf and the Ma‘ṭan al-Sarrah airbase were identified to be (at any point within the last 3 years) capable of receiving aircraft. Reports (The Libya Observer, 2025; McGregor, 2025) confirmed the arrival of Russian military personnel and equipment at both bases, which later headed for Sudan. An Ilyushin Il-76 of the Russian Air Force has landed at both airbases; this is the same model that Moscow uses to transport cargo from Latakia to Libya (itamilradar, 2026).
Images 1, 2, and 3: al-Jawf and Ma‘ṭan al-Sarrah airbases, and their location within the broader region
The centralisation of Russia’s military activity in the Sahel provides one important advantage. The RAC cannot go against Moscow’s directive as its official organ, nor can it establish a semi-independent power base similar to former Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. To prevent the emergence of oligarchs and warlords, Russia trades its plausible deniability for direct control over its forces. However, the new situation means that the international community can now attribute the actions in the Sahel to Russian imperialism and foreign interference illegal under international law, giving Western powers another opportunity to place further sanctions on Russia.
Afraid of Prigozhin-like warlords, the RAC directly serves the Russian Ministry of Defence (Faulkner et al., 2024). This change no longer allows the group to build similar criminal networks, as the Russian Federation can be held directly accountable for such illegal actions. Therefore, the RAC further ‘outsources the outsourcing’ to local tribes by providing them with weapons, technology, and intelligence. These ‘partners’ include the Toubou tribe that lives around the Libya-Chad border as well as the Massīrīyah and Rizayqāt tribes they access through the ranks of the RSF in Sudan (Libya Tribune, 2025). The Russian connection provides legitimacy to these tribes as security partners, elevating their authority above the central governments in the border areas.
Since bank transfers are not the most difficult processes to halt in the international community, Russia utilises a different ‘chain of payment’. In exchange for their support, Russian forces receive mining concessions and raw resources in the Sahel, such as gold, oil, and uranium (Faulkner et al., 2024). Third-party states, such as the UAE, often help in turning the extraction into money for Russia. The UAE imported 66 tonnes of gold extracted in Sudan either directly from Russia or indirectly through Armenia (Ummel & In der Smitten, 2025). Singling out these exchanges and preventing them from happening is a key objective to anyone trying to restrict the RAC in the Sahel.
Policy Recommendations
- Western powers could use coordinated intelligence efforts to identify and target the logistics partners, cargo companies, and banking service providers that Russia uses. Putting political pressure on the UAE and Central African governments through the use of sanctions to exert financial pressure against Russian policies of resource extraction (Marten, 2022) and thus disrupt their ‘chain of payment’ could significantly disincentivise the RAC’s engagement. It is of crucial importance to not only focus on direct cash transfers, but block actions by Russian shell companies.
- Direct humanitarian and economic intervention from Western organisations could initiate inter-border community dialogues and reduce the reliance of local populations on the security services and economic incentives provided by Russia and other warlords. These initiatives would require investments into transport, medical, and education infrastructure along with tackling the root causes of cross-border smuggling. Creating markets and processing hubs would decrease the dependence of the tribes on Russian-administered smuggling routes.
Bibliography
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