FT: Russia withdraws 200 Wagner mercenaries from Libya along with 1,000 Syrians.

  London, 28 April 2022(Lana) Britain's Financial Times on Thursday devoted a prominent space to a report prepared by its correspondents in Ukraine’s combat zones to talk about Russia's reducing of (numbers of Wagner mercenaries and Syrian fighters in Libya, because Russia's invasion of Ukraine restricted wagner's deployment in the North and West of Africa).

"More than 1,000 Syrian fighters deployed by the Kremlin in Libya have been withdrawn, according to Libyan and Western officials, in what they saw as a first indication of the effects of the Ukrainian war on the deployment of fighters and mercenaries abroad," the report said. The two reporters attributed to a regional official his admission that there were some 5,000 mercenaries in the country working on behalf of Moscow. A senior Libyan official confirmed that the Russians had withdrawn mercenaries from his country but did not provide figures.

The correspondents said that (Libyan and Western officials, in what they saw as a first indication of the effects of the Ukrainian war, two Western officials said that about 200 Wagner mercenaries and 1,000 Syrian fighters had been withdrawn in the past weeks. "At first, the Syrians and then Wagner's elements were withdrawn,"

The correspondents quoted Imad Al-Din Badi, a senior researcher at the Atlantic Council, as saying that the past weeks has seen increased mobility in this direction, although there was still a number of them but less than before".

Three Western officials said that Wagner's mercenaries had been withdrawn for re-deployment in Ukraine, and it was not known whether Syrian fighters were also deployed there, according to the Financial Times report.

=Lana=