India, Feb. 6 -- When more than thirty journalism students and faculty members gathered inside lecture halls at the University of Tripoli, the moment marked far more than a routine academic workshop. It signaled the return-quiet, deliberate, and strategic-of Russia's international media voice to a landscape from which it had once been effectively excluded.

The occasion was the first SputnikPro master class ever held in Libya, led by managing editors of Sputnik Arabic, Yazan Ajouz and Suliman Wasim. Officially, the focus was artificial intelligence and journalism. Unofficially, the event represented something much larger: Libya's recalibration of its media, educational, and geopolitical partnerships in a rapidly fragmenting global order-...