Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo / AP
The chaos and confusion of civil war has seen Washington and Moscow clash again, this time with a US drone being shot down by Kremlin-backed mercenaries in Libya.
In October, US President Donald Trump ordered his troops to retreat from the Syria-Turkey border. This was to avoid potential accidents with advancing forces belonging to Russia and his NATO ally Turkey.
But Washington and Moscow are again shooting at each other, this time in oil-rich Libya, reports News.com.au.
The Pentagon has accused Russian troops of targeting one of its surveillance drones close to the Libyan capital of Tripoli last month. The drone was watching on as a battle for control over the city began to unfold.
This is odd.
Since Mr Trump suddenly reversed US policy on Libya in April, Washington and Moscow are supposed to be on the same side.
The US Pentagon's Africa Command has issued a statement saying an unarmed US surveillance drone was shot down near Libya's capital on November 21 by Russian weapons.
Now, it wants the highly sensitive wreckage back.
US Army General Stephen Townsend says Russian troops are refusing to return it.
"They say they don't know where it is, but I am not buying it," General Townsend told Reuters at the weekend.
RPA lost over Tripoli, incident under investigation - https://t.co/4wCZTuYW0O pic.twitter.com/Bcc0tNmWYU
— US AFRICOM (@USAfricaCommand) November 22, 2019
The circumstances of the incident are confused.
But both General Townsend and his spokesman Colonel Christopher Karns have attempted to excuse it as accidental.
Townsend said the Russians "didn't know it was a US remotely piloted aircraft when they fired on it". Colonel Karns stated the air-defence gunners opened fire after "mistaking it for an opposition aircraft".
This is possible.
Libya has become a hive of combat drones in the past year.
Cheap Turkish and Chinese-made devices are now swarming over the battlefields.
Above them loiter larger, more powerful, machines controlled by US and French forces.
Now, advanced Russian drones have joined the fray.
It's created a scenario where General Townsend is not just worried about his drones. He's concerned at the impact fresh Russian forces are having on the civil war.
"This highlights the malign influence of Russian mercenaries acting to influence the outcome of the civil war in Libya, and who are directly responsible for the recent and sharp increase in fighting, casualties and destruction around Tripoli," he said.
An analyst for the US think-tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Frederic Wehrey, says well-equipped Russian mercenaries are tipping the balance on Libya's battlefields.
On a recent tour of the battlefields, Mr Wehrey said a Libyan commander "bemoaned the apparent improvement in the precision of the ever-present armed drones that destroy his vehicles at will, day or night".
"Russian antitank missiles, the dreaded Kornets, snake between sand berms to incinerate their target with devastating accuracy," he added.
"And then there are the Russian snipers. Their shots to the chest and head, al-Darrat says, reveal professionalism he's never seen before."
The US State Department had been operating under the premise that the valid government of Libya was that of Prime Minister al-Sarraj. But, in April, Mr Trump – after being lobbied by Egypt's controversial President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – suddenly appeared to reverse course.
He picked up the phone, made a surprise call to self-proclaimed Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, and declared support for his assault on Tripoli.
Nominally, the US and Russia are now on the same side.
But nobody appears to have told the troops on the ground.
Mr Trump "recognised Field Marshal Haftar's significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya's oil resources, and the two discussed a shared vision for Libya's transition to a stable, democratic political system," the White House announced in April.
But the US State Department last month declared "support for Libya's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's attempts to exploit the conflict against the will of the Libyan people".
The Kremlin insists it does not deploy military contractors to foreign conflicts. Russian authorities insist any of its citizens serving there are civilians operating as private volunteers.
But the evidence on the ground says otherwise.
The Moscow-backed Wagner Group has long been providing "shock troops" to spearhead assaults by Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In one infamous incident, tanks and troops from the Wagner Group came under intense fire from US special forces and aircraft in February 2018. Hundreds of mercenaries and pro-Assad fighters were killed or wounded in what began as an assault on a US-Kurdish stronghold.
Wagner Group, run by Yevgeny Prigozhin who has close ties to the Kremlin, has also been observed fighting in Ukraine.
By calling its troops mercenaries, analysts say Moscow is producing implausible deniability – seeding just enough doubt to avoid international sanctions.
In Libya, Field Marshal Haftar denies he is receiving any international military support.
But Reuters reports one former Russian contractor as saying several hundred mercenaries from the Wagner Group have been operating alongside the LNA since September.
Western diplomats and the UN-backed Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) state they have evidence backing up the claim – including mobile phones, communications intercepts and captured personal belongings. The GNA puts the number of Wagner Group mercenaries at between 600 and 800.
"We are going to visit Russia after we collect all evidence and present to the authorities and see what they say," declared a spokesman for the UN-backed government.
The latest US Defence Secretary, Mark Esper, told Reuters he believed Russia was trying to "put their finger on the scale" to tip the balance of Libya's civil war.
Moscow's "Grey Zone" deception tactics are having a diverting effect.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, David Schenker, says the State Department is working with Europe to impose sanctions upon the Wagner Group.
"The way that this organisation of Russians, in particular, has operated before (and) raises the spectre of large-scale casualties in civilian populations," he said.
Various factions, including Islamic State, have been fighting a vicious civil war in Libya since 2014. The nation was thrown into chaos in 2011 after a Western-backed uprising toppled long-term dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Like war-torn Syria, Moscow has seized upon the chaos as an opportunity to extend its influence into the Mediterranean.
In recent months, Russia has surged state-backed mercenaries into Libya to assist the Libyan National Army. This Libyan faction is under the control of Field Marshal Haftar, who is also backed by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France.
Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the GNA is backed by the European Union and the United Nations, Qatar and Turkey.
Exactly where the United States stands in the dispute is uncertain.
The fresh offensive against Tripoli by Field Marshal Haftar seems set to derail attempts at bringing the opposing sides together for talks. A UN-sponsored conference is supposed to begin in Libya early next year.
"Putin would like nothing more than to keep Europe busy and divided over Libya, scared of illegal immigration, paralysed by right-wing populism that threatens the very idea of the EU," Libya Outlook analyst Mohammed Eljareh told Al Jazeera. "All of this is music to Putin's ears."
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