An Egyptian Perspective On Russia's Long-Negotiated Basing Rights at Port Sudan
This past week, the Sudanese Foreign Minister was quoted by TASS as saying that the Russian and Sudanese governments had reached an agreement on a Russian Naval Base on the Sudanese coast. It's no secret to anyone in the region that negotiations have been ongoing since 2020, with “no obstacles” to the first construction of a Russian naval facility at Port Sudan, yet bilateral negotiations have dragged on for years.
One of the major reasons why negotiations had been inconclusive to date has been the Sudanese Civil War. During this conflict, the now disbanded Wagner PMC Russian private military company had defended its late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin's gold-mining interests in the civil war-torn country. Another complicating factor has been US and UK opposition to any permanent Russian presence in Sudan amid the Russians' war with NATO-backed Ukraine. In more recent months, the Ukrainians have boasted of planning ambushes and drone operations against former Wagner Russian mercenaries in the country, though how many casualties the Ukrainians have inflicted and what steps Moscow has taken to hunt down Ukrainian GUR operatives in the country both remain unclear.
Above map credit: Sri Lanka Guardian February 13, 2025
The Sudanese Foreign Minister reiterated on Wednesday February 12, 2025 that hosting a Russian base does not pose any risk to any regional or non-African country, but he did not give any more comments to TASS and RT and has refused to be interviewed by any foreign media outlet on the issue. But the BBC, Reuters and other Western media quickly picked up the story and clearly took the Sudanese announcement seriously.
However, with the ongoing civil war in Sudan, it is likely that this base is not going to be completed until the conflict is over, and what we are most likely to see will simply be some publicized, largely ceremonial Russian Navy visits to the Port of Sudan. A new facility has not been constructed over the past four years, as some Sudanese demands for port upgrades have not yet been met or completed by Russia. As a matter of fact, negotiations between Sudan and Russia have stretched back to 2017. While a basing deal has been signed on paper in 2020, nothing has been built in Port Sudan yet.
The agreement for the port states that the base is to function for 25 years and it will house up to 300 Russian sailors and marines at Port Sudan, the country's main seaport on the Red Sea. This location would give Russia a strategic foothold, which would be even more necessary after the fall of the Assad government in early December. With Moscow still negotiating with the post-Assad regime to maintain Russian bases at Tartus and Kheimmim on the Syrian coast, this much less developed facility would be a backup. But it would not by itself remedy the loss of Moscow's decades-old Tartus naval base on the Mediterranean. Rather it would be a slight consolation prize–a base along the Red Sea lanes where 12% of global trade passes through the Suez is no laughing matter.
Russian involvement in Sudan is not new, Russian interests in Sudan mostly relate to the gold mining sector in the country, with former Wagner PMC mercenaries now enlisted in Russia's Africa Corps being the main Russian arm inside the Sudanese state. Sudan also has some energy resources, but the development of its oil and gas sector has been hampered by decades of Western sanctions over Darfur and more recently, the Sudanese civil war.
Since the start of the civil war, Russia has mostly kept quiet about it during the duration of the conflict, considering that their main partner in the country used to be Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo aka Hemeti. Dagalo is now considered one of the worst war criminals and is facing regional and international warrants and retribution. That said, a few months back the Russian state re-affirmed its support for the Sudanese central government and the Sudanese Army, bringing Moscow's position in line with that Egypt regarding the conflict. So relations between Hemeti and Russia have been nonexistent over the last six months.