Russia flooding West with migrants

Putin tries to ‘destabilise Europe’ by using militias in Africa to control flow of people

RUSSIA is using private militias to control and “weaponise” immigration into Europe, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Kremlin has influence over a number of the main routes into the continent and border police have warned that, with the arrival of spring, Russia is likely to “intensify” its efforts to move migrants. It has been feared that Vladimir Putin is using the tactic to destabilise Europe.

The Telegraph has seen intelligence documents detailing plans for Russian agents to set up a “15,000-man strong border police force” comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants.

A security source said: “If you can control the migrant routes into Europe then you can effectively control elections, because you can restrict or flood a certain area with migrants in order to influence public opinion at a crucial time.”

A failure to control the number of migrants coming to the UK is already seen as a major weakness for Rishi Sunak, who is struggling to push through a scheme to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda. In the year to June 2023, 52,530 illegal migrants were recorded as entering the UK, up 17 per cent on the previous year. Most of these crossed the Channel in small boats.

Figures released yesterday revealed that the number of people granted asylum in the UK hit a record high in 2023 as officials waved through thousands of applications in an attempt to clear a huge post-pandemic backlog.

A surge of migrants into Europe this winter prompted by Putin could lead to an increase in small boats crossing this summer, putting Mr Sunak under further pressure.

Frontex, the EU’S border police, says it has seen Russia using migration “as a lever in a larger game of influence and pressure”. The agency is warning that an increasingly isolated Putin choosing to move migrants to Europe’s doorstep – both along Russia’s eastern borders and through proxies in the south, including in Africa – is a major threat to security for 2024.

It comes amid growing tensions between Russia and the West, with Putin using his annual state of the nation speech yesterday to warn that he would use nuclear weapons if Nato countries send troops into Ukraine.

Mercenaries including the Wagner group have been fuelling migration by increasing instability and violence in parts of Africa under their control and by moving migrants to the borders and supporting smugglers, experts say.

Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, said: “The UK’S adversaries are weaponising the flow of people in Europe’s near abroad, as we witnessed on the border between Belarus, Poland and Lithuania in 2021, and exacerbating instability in the Maghreb and Sahel region through the use of proxies.”

Russia’s plans to set up a Libyan militia, as seen by The Telegraph, fell through when payments due to be made via “the Russian-libyan cultural institute” in Moscow were never made. No record of such a company exists.

However, thousands of Wagner mercenaries have been fighting in Libya’s civil war since at least 2019 for Russia

ally Gen Khalifa Haftar, and the group has a stronghold in the region. Antonio Tajani, Italy’s deputy prime minister, has said that Rome has intelligence that the mercenaries “are very active and in contact with trafficking gangs and militia interested in migrant smuggling”.

Amid growing tensions over the conflict between Israel and Gaza, Russia has also been strengthening its ties with Tunisia, another major source of migrants into the central Mediterranean.

In its latest risk report, Frontex warns: “Given the extent of hostility between Russia and the West and the reduced interdependence between them, the likelihood of the instrumentalisation of migrants by Russia and Belarus has increased.

“Importantly, the instrumentalisation of migrants may not only be limited to the eastern land borders as Russia’s allies and proxies to the south and south-east could be leveraged.”

EU law defines “instrumentalisation of migrants” as a situation where another country encourages or facilitates the movement of migrants to the borders.