About 300 are the contractors related to the Russian military intelligence (GRU) who would support General Haftar in his recent actions south of Libya. The news appeared in The Telegraph. Russian support would have come from the private company known as Wagner Group that would provide the Libyan army with artillery, tanks, drones and ammunition. Contractors are "almost interchangeable with the GRU". Agents of the GRU have been accused by the British government of having poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury with an aggressive nerve.
According to an anonymous source, the Russians "are trying to protect the ports of Tobruk and Derna in favor of the Russian fleet to control the flow of oil to southern Europe".
The Wagner group is linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a restaurant mogul known as "Putin's chef," whose business is under US Treasury sanctions after his online troll company, according to US investigations, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Wagner Group previously fought alongside Kremlin allies in eastern Ukraine and Syria.
Prigozhin was filmed in a video with Haftar and the Russian defense minister during the talks last November. As evidence of the links with the North African country, there are flight tracking radar data showing a private jet connected to Prigozhin seen several times on the radar in Libyan airspace, even at the end of last January.
Among the news of Wagner's deployment in Libya, the Russian periodical Novaya Gazeta published footage (from Libya) of Yevgeny Prigozhin during the aforementioned official talks between Defense Minister Shoigu and Libyan general Khalifa Haftar.
Yevgeny Shabayev, a Cossack activist, also reported that Libyan security officials had told him that Wagner's contractors were operating in Libya. They would also be involved in smuggling drugs and people.
The private group of contractors, according to Reuters, is also employed in Venezuela as the protection of President Nicolas Maduro.
The news of Wagner's involvement in Libya matches the Russian ambitions of increase influence in Africa, through arms, energy deals and military and political support.
Yevgeny Prigozhin leads the dark operations that have favored Russian commercial and political interests. Its mercenaries have also worked in the war-torn Central African Republic and Sudan, two Russian military contractors told The Telegraph.
In addition, The Telegraph has discovered evidence that Russian military contractors were in Madagascar and that Prigozhin had sent political consultants to help elect Emmerson Mnangagwa president of Zimbabwe last August.
Mr. Mnangagwa sent emissaries to Moscow in the months before and after the vote and went to meet Vladimir Putin in January, signing a deal to manage platinum deposits with a firm run by the son of a senior Russian official.
Opposition politicians from the President of Zimbabwe also said on several occasions that Russia would interfere in the elections.
In a recording heard by The Telegraph, a geologist connected to Prigozhin said that Russian political consultants have "lined up" in Zimbabwe during the elections. The Telegraph confirmed that the man was a geologist who in recent years had worked in Zimbabwe, the Central African Republic, Madagascar and many other African countries.
The geologist has linked the presence of Russian consultants to the mining activity in Zimbabwe.
The geologist linked to Prigozhin also said that "military contractors are protecting our diamond and gold mines" in the Central African Republic. A Prigozhin subsidiary has been involved in mining joint ventures between Russia and the Central African Republic and has also funded soft-power ventures such as a radio station and a beauty pageant.
A January investigation linked the ambush and murder of three Russian journalists who spoke and reported in the Wagner Group media in Africa.
It is also believed that Wagner fighters helped dictator Omar Bashir brutally suppress opposition protests in Sudan. White men in Russian-made military trucks were photographed near the demonstrations. Moscow later admitted that the Russian military instructors of both "private and state structures" operated in Sudan.
Ruslan Leviev of the Conflict Intelligence Team, who tracks Russian military activity through open source information, said that Prigozhin's mercenaries, consultants and mining companies in Africa are all "active" tools of the Kremlin's foreign policy. The flight records that place the private jet connected to Prigozhin in Sudan, Kenya and Chad indicate that it could also be active in these places.
Oleg Krinitsyn, head of the RSB group, a Moscow-based security company that demolished a cement factory in Libya in the 2016, said that Russian military contractors can not work in Africa without the support of the Russian authorities.
The RSB group worked in countries such as Madagascar, Somalia, Mozambique and South Africa and received offers to work in Sudan.
Russian citizenship is now "like a password" to work across the continent, Krinitsyn said.