Moscow cultivates neutral image as Libya quakes
Despite the Russians' nominal condemnation of renewed fighting in Libya and continuing contacts with all the major players, Moscow doesn’t want to see Gen. Khalifa Hifter defeated.
MOSCOW — Russia’s deputy foreign minister and Putin’s special envoy for the MENA region, Mikhail Bogdanov, received a phone call April 6 from Gen. Khalifa Hifter, the commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA).
Hifter, the strongman who controls two-thirds of the Libyan territory, ordered his forces April 4 to make a “victorious march” on Tripoli, the capital of the UN-backed government of Fayez al-Sarraj, supported among other groups by powerful Misrata militias.
