Ceuta - the Moscow Connection

Much remains unclear, but Russia's improving relations with Morocco and a recent energy deal offers a partial explanation of recent events

The recent crisis in Ceuta which saw tens of thousands of irregular migrants, most of them Moroccan citizens, surge into the Spanish enclave in North Africa, leaves many questions unanswered. What we can be pretty sure of is that there weren’t 60,000 desperate Moroccans who just coincidentally happened to be next to the Ceuta border on that particular day, ready to try to swim across to Spanish territory, and in doing so lead politicians across Europe to abandon Spain in its hour of need and suspend Schengen migration co-operation, thereby undermining the EU’s solidarity on one of its most important policies. So what really happened? How did this crisis unfold?

It will probably be months before we know all of the answers. But some elements of this story have clear precedents. Like many countries on Europe’s periphery, such as Belarus, Turkey and Libya, Morocco has learned that it can bring extraordinary pressure on Europe by weaponising migration. Turkey has received €12.4 billion of EU money since 2011 to help it deal with the vast numbers of refugees on its territory and (importantly for the EU) to incentivise Turkey to police its own borders, preventing the sorts of crises seen in 2015 when nearly a million irregular migrants passed from Turkey into the EU (mostly via Greece), enabled by Turkish border guards looking the other way. In 2021, Belarus did not hide its hand: President Lukashenko announced his intention to “flood” the EU with migrants and then deliberately loosened its visa rules for Middle Eastern nationalities whilst announcing in those countries that it would no longer be policing its border with the EU and increasing flights from Baghdad and Damascus to Minsk. A surge of Iraqi and Syrian migrants followed, and they were escorted across the borders of Lithuania, Poland and Lativa by Belarusian troops.

Morocco pulled a similar move in 2021. Its motivation centred around its policies relating to Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco from 1975 to 1979. Morocco has rejected proposals for an independence referendum and its claim to Western Sahara has historically had little international support, but it got a huge boost in 2020 when Donald Trump’s first administration announced that it regarded the territory as part of Morocco. Rabat’s diplomatic success in building support for its claim, or at least building support for the “facts on the ground” that see the territory under Moroccan control, has been remarkable.

But Rabat’s most difficult relations on this subject had traditionally been with Spain and with Algeria. In 2021, Spain allowed a senior Western Sahara leader to seek treatment in a Spanish hospital. In response, Moroccan border guards stopped policing the frontier at Ceuta and around 10,000 irregular migrants crossed into Spanish territory. Rather like Belarus, at the time the Moroccan government did not hide its motivation, with a government minister saying, “What did Spain expect from Morocco… Morocco has the right ... so that Spain knows that underestimating Morocco is costly.”

So, the events of the past week have a precedent. The question is, what was the triggering action? Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has substantially improved relations with Morocco in recent years, including agreeing with the principles of a Moroccan plan for regional autonomy for Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty, which has had widespread international support, seen as a diplomatic coup for Morocco. The answer probably lies in Algeria. Morocco’s neighbour has been the strongest supporter of Western Sahara and it hosts and provides support to the Polisario Front, a political-military movement that aspires to lead the territory to independence. In July this year, Sanchez looked to restore his troubled relationship with Algeria with an official visit that pledged closer co-operation on energy and economic matters. Was this sufficient to enrage Morocco, causing it to open the floodgates just as it had done in 2021?

That on its own seems like a massive over-reaction from Rabat. But two other key relationships, putting Morocco in an international alliance network of autocratic states, may have played a role. As already mentioned, Trump has a close connection with Morocco. He has the opposite with Spain, a country he described as a “terrible partner”, before announcing that he would “cut off all trade with Spain” (something that he has in fact no power to enact). Trump’s reaction to the Ceuta crisis was also instructive, exaggeratedly describing the ongoing incident as: “an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people.” He added that the Spanish government “don’t know what to do and it’s happening again today.” Trump’s beef with Spain is largely over its low defence spending, but it’s not irrelevant that in Pedro Sanchez the country is led by a leftwing, pro-immigration, successful politician who is good-looking and charismatic. All these things must be triggering for Trump.

We mustn’t forget that the Trump administration has a publicly stated aim to “cultivate resistance” to European governments it views as not aligned with its worldview. Online disinformation experts are already seeing evidence of US-sponsored activities targeting European liberalism and a recent State Department funding opportunity pledged a further $5 million for these operations. So the idea that the US may have connived with its close ally Morocco in this context isn’t outlandish.

Another member of the axis of autocracies, Russia, also plays a role here. A series of misleading online posts promised Moroccans that “the Spanish border is open and can be crossed without papers”. These messages, and many others with extensive details about crossing points and places to buy waterproof bags and other useful kit for swimming across the breakwater into Spanish territory, were magnified and spread online by bots and other automated social media accounts. Whether Russia, the world leader in such techniques, assisted the Moroccans in making this message go viral, isn’t clear. What is clear is that Russian-controlled disinformation accounts leapt on the opportunity to weaponise the chaos in Ceuta, using an online propaganda network to weaponise the idea of Europe riven apart by fears of untrammelled irregular migration.

But why would Russia, historically not aligned with Morocco, seek to get involved? On one level a simple answer: Russia profits from disorder and chaos in Europe. Spain may not be a big military spender, but it has been a solid supporter of Ukraine and Russia has carried out assassinations of defectors living on Spanish territory. But there may be more specific reasons: Russia, historically close to Algeria, has shifted its position to be closer to Morocco on the Western Sahara question. In 2025 it let down Algeria by failing to veto, as expected, a UN resolution that endorsed Morocco’s approach and Russia’s diplomats, unusually, declined to work with Algeria’s to get the text amended with language more favourable to Algiers. This new Russian alignment with Morocco took another major step only a few days ago when Morocco sent Russia a shipment of gasoline, something that is currently in desperately short supply as a result of Ukrainian strikes against Russian refineries.

So did Russia, bailed out of an energy crisis by Morocco and softening its traditional approach on Western Sahara, assist Morocco in a hybrid warfare operation targeting a mutual antagonist, Spain? And did the United States, engaged in a policy of cultivating resistance to European governments it sees as unhelpful, offer further support in some form? It’s impossible to answer these questions at this stage, but circumstantial evidence points to it being a significant possibility.