This piece completes the picture of : Russia, through a new agreement with Niger, takes control of migration flows to Italy
This was also admitted by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in her letter sent to member states ahead of the European Council today and tomorrow. “Departures from Libya amount to 93 per cent of illegal overflows, we have estimated an increase of 7 per cent along the central Mediterranean route and 173 per cent referring to arrivals in Greece from the east of Libya.” In the letter, von der Leyen announces that Magnus Brunner, Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, will be sent to the country, then a Team Europe mission to talk to the authorities in the east and west to calm the departures.
It was precisely the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis who most of all pushed von der Leyen to put the issue of migrants high on the agenda at the European Council. Two days ago he announced the dispatch of two Greek navy frigates off the coast of Libya to repel the barges. An unprecedented move that hides many difficulties from a legal point of view. “It looks like a kind of Sophia mission, made however to send the migrants back,” says a European official, “Only that it is a risky move: if a military ship intercepts them, then it has to keep them.
As is always the case in Libya, the rise or fall of migrant flows is a cyclical phenomenon, often linked to other dossiers. In the Greek case, there has recently been a delicate game with the Libyan authorities concerning oil exploration off the North African country, an area in which Athens would like to find space by taking it away from Turkish rivals. Last month [May 2025], the Greek government launched a tender for hydrocarbon exploration south of Crete, in a move contested by both Libyan governments, west and east, as it was deemed detrimental to Libyan sovereignty. Shortly afterwards, the ‘anomalous’ flow of landings to the Greek islands already full of tourists increased.
For the Italian government, tying the Russian dossier to that of migrants could be instrumental in finally drawing the Europeans’ attention to the Mediterranean front.
Two years ago, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto tried this. “The exponential increase in the migratory phenomenon from the African coasts,” the minister had said in March 2023, “is part of a clear strategy of hybrid warfare that the Wagner division , mercenaries in the pay of Russia, is implementing. Meanwhile, evidence of direct Russian involvement in the departure business has never emerged.
‘Unlike what Matteo Salvini has done in the past, Meloni intelligently prefers to keep her distance from Putin, to detach herself from her adoration of him,’ Harchaoui explains. ‘She and Haftar have very close ties and the Italian government is trying in every way to strike a deal with Benghazi on migrants.
It would be counterproductive for the Italian premier to say now that it is Saddam, the general’s son, who directly manages these trafficking deals’. Especially if Saddam Haftar himself paid a visit to Italy just ten days ago, with official meetings held at the Interior and Defence Ministries, precisely to talk about migrants. On the table for discussion, as reported by Il Foglio, was a plan for aid from the Italian government to train the general’s forces and monitor the borders.
