Sudan says plan for first Russian naval base in Africa will go ahead

A plan for Russia to establish its first naval base in Africa will go ahead, Sudan’s foreign minister has confirmed, after years of delays over the Red Sea military port.

If the agreement is implemented, Russia would join the US and China in the region; they have bases to the south in Djibouti.

The announcement came during a visit by the foreign minister, Ali Youssef Ahmed al-Sharif, to Moscow where he met his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. After their meeting, Sharif said the two countries were in “complete agreement” on establishing a Russian base “and there are no obstacles”.

The Red Sea is one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, connecting the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean. About 12% of global trade passes through it.

Sudan first floated the idea of allowing Russia to have a naval facility on its coast in 2017 during a trip to Sochi by Omar al-Bashir, the then president, who was ousted in a 2019 coup. A deal was eventually signed in 2020 that reportedly permitted Russia to keep up to four navy ships, including nuclear-powered ones, in Sudan for a period of 25 years.

At the time, a draft agreement said the bases were for logistical purposes and were “defensive and not aimed against other countries”.

After the meeting with Lavrov, Sharif said a new deal was not required as “there was a deal signed [in 2020] and there is no disagreement”, adding that it only had to be ratified by both sides.

Sudan’s military and civilian leaders dragged their feet on moving ahead with the deal due to lingering differences over its terms. The civil war that started in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces further complicated relations between Russia and Sudan, as the Russian-backed Wagner group threw its weight behind the RSF while the Kremlin appeared to back the Sudanese army.

“Russia was playing both sides,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank and the author of a book on Moscow’s engagements with Africa. Since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary group’s leader, the Kremlin had “incrementally” deepened ties with the Sudanese army, Ramani added.

Last April, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, visited Sudan and pledged “uncapped” support for its army. Russia has also backed Sudan at the UN security council, where it vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons, a move the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, called a disgrace.

Sudan’s army has won a string of battles against the RSF in recent months and is increasingly confident of a decisive victory over the paramilitary group, whose leaders the US has accused of genocide. In January the US imposed sanctions on Sudan’s army leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, for “choosing war over good-faith negotiation”.

Aid organisations have said Sudan is the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with the largest internally displaced population and fears that famine has broken out in parts of the country.

The announcement comes weeks after Moscow’s ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad, was overthrown in an armed rebellion in Syria, casting doubt on the future of Russia’s Tartus naval base in the eastern Mediterranean.