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Sudan on Wednesday said it had agreed a deal for Russia to determine a naval base on the war-torn country’s Red Beach, marking a rare success for Moscow’s drive to expand its network of military bases within the region.
Asked in regards to the progress of talks on the bottom, Sudan’s foreign minister Ali Al-Sharif said on a visit to Moscow: “We agreed, we agreed, we reached an agreement on the whole lot.”
The Kremlin didn’t immediately comment on what was agreed, but a base in Sudan could offer Moscow an alternative choice to its naval base at Tartus in Syria, where the long run of its presence is uncertain after the overthrow of its ally Bashar al-Assad.
Russia has been linked with either side of Sudan’s civil war since fighting erupted in 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a former camel herder accused of genocide by the US.
Port Sudan, near where the Russians have been hoping to determine their Red Sea base, has been the headquarters of the Sudanese army and de facto president General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan since they were driven out of the capital Khartoum in 2023.
Russia’s interest in a naval base in Sudan has grown since Assad’s Syrian regime was overthrown in December, with Assad himself fleeing to Russia.
Russia had used the Hmeimim air base and Tartus naval base in north-western Syria as logistics hubs for operations further afield within the Middle East and Africa, corresponding to in Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic.
But Moscow has drawn down its presence at its Syrian bases amid apparent preparations to evacuate if needed, recent aerial photographs show.
Syria’s latest government has not said whether it would allow Russia to retain its bases within the country but has requested that Moscow turn over Assad, based on an individual aware of the situation.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday spoke by phone with Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and offered support for “the Syrian state’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity” in addition to humanitarian aid, based on the Kremlin.
Russia began talks to determine a base south of Port Sudan in 2017, when former President Omar al-Bashir visited Moscow seeking support for his crumbling regime as he faced a well-liked rebellion.
The deal comes because the Sudanese Armed Forces have succeeded in shifting momentum within the war with a series of battlefield victories. The military and allied Islamist militias are readying for a final push into the capital Khartoum after seizing once affluent northern suburbs this month.
While Russian Wagner mercenaries had fought alongside the RSF, last summer Moscow switched tactics and threw its weight behind the federal government.
An agreement on the naval base would bring Moscow, alongside Egypt, Qatar and other Middle Eastern states, decisively to the military’s side at a critical moment within the fighting. However the RSF still controls a lot of the east of the country and has its own international backers.
Syria’s foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani told the Financial Times in January that he Assad regime had saddled the country with about $8bn in debt to Russia. Shaibani said on Wednesday that his country was on the lookout for further reassurance from Russia and Iran, each of that are in search of to retain influence after Assad’s downfall.
“There are positive messages, but we would like these positive messages to show into a transparent policy that makes the Syrian people feel reassured,” he said in Dubai.
“There are wounds among the many Syrian people and there’s pain that the Syrian people have suffered by the hands of those two countries.”
Additional reporting by Raya Jalabi in Beirut
