Kremlin did not refute reports that it had received request to begin military operations in Libya
The Press Secretary for the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin has no information about Libya asking to begin the deliveries of Russian weapons.
"I can neither confirm nor deny," the Kremlin spokesman said, responding to a question whether there was an appeal to Russia to launch a military operation in Libya, TASS reports.
Peskov claims he does not know through which channels such a message could have been sent. "I have no data on whether such an appeal could have been made through some official channels," he said.
Earlier, Izvestia, citing a source close to the Russian diplomatic circles, said that the commander-in-chief of the Libyan army, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu to start the supply of arms to Libyan forces. The newspaper notes that the Libyan ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Abdel Basset al-Badri, passed Haftar's request to the Russian president's Special Representative for the Middle East and African countries, Mikhail Bogdanov.