Russia secures a gateway to the Red Sea as Sudan approves naval base deal

Russia and Sudan reached an agreement to establish a naval base on the Red Sea nation’s coast by Moscow, according to reports.

The agreement was negotiated during Bashir’s rule in 2019 and formally signed in November 2020 shortly after the military takeover. However, its future became uncertain following the outbreak of war in 2023.

“We have agreed on everything,” the Russian news agency RASS said, quoting Ali Youssef Ahmed al-Sharif.

In an interview with TASS, military expert Alexander Stepanov, program director of the Academy of Political Sciences and senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences said that the establishment of a logistics support facility for the Russian Navy in Sudan will enhance Russia’s geopolitical influence in the region and the Indian Ocean as a whole, while also securing the Arabian coast

Russia has strengthened ties with both sides in Sudan’s nearly two-year civil war, with officials visiting the army’s wartime capital, Port Sudan, in recent months. The Red Sea, a key global trade route, has also become a geopolitical flashpoint.

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Moscow’s interest in Port Sudan has grown amid concerns over losing its military assets in Syria, where the new government recently revoked a treaty granting Russia a long-term lease for its only foreign naval base.

Last year, a top Sudanese general said Russia had asked for a fuelling station on the Red Sea in exchange for weapons and ammunition.

Sharif said such a station presented no threat to any other country or to Sudan’s sovereignty, drawing on the example of nearby Djibouti, which hosts several foreign bases.

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Such a station would be beneficial to Russia, particularly after the fall of Syria’s Assad regime put in question key bases there. The war in Sudan has drawn in multiple competing regional and global influences, in part due to its ample Red Sea coastline, as well as gold resources.