MICHAEL BURLEIGH
Daily Mail
October 16, 2018
So bloody and extensive is President Putin’s record of aggression, not least in Syria and Ukraine, that an incursion into the empty deserts of North Africa might hardly seem worth noting.
Yet the discovery that Russia is moving troops and missiles into war-torn Libya has rightly caused alarms to sound throughout the capitals of Europe.
It is a step of huge significance, and one with potentially disastrous results for Western nations.
Libya has both oil and Mediterranean ports, and Russia is hungry for both – cause enough for concern, perhaps.
Yet the real fear for European governments is this: Libya, with its porous southern borders, has become the main jumping-off point for the hundreds of thousands of African migrants now seeking to cross the Mediterranean to the shores of the EU and, in particular, Italy.
More than half a million adults and children from Ghana, Senegal, Kenya and Nigeria, as well as war-ravaged Eritrea and Somalia, have made the perilous voyage in the last five years, the human cargo in a £6 billion-a-year trade more lucrative and less risky than smuggling drugs.
This article was posted: Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 6:16 am
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