Malik Agar, the vice president of Sudan’s military-dominated Transitional Sovereignty Council, left no doubt about his country’s position in comments made in June on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
Sudan is indeed interested in reviving a deal to build a Russian naval hub in the Red Sea, Agar said, according to the Sudanese newspaper Sudan Tribune.
Sudan and Russia they have been discussing such a deal for years. According to the online magazine Understanding War, As early as 2017, then Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached an agreement to build a Russian base with space for several hundred soldiers and four ships.
However, due to the political instability that followed in Sudan at the time, its parliament was unable to ratify the convention. But discussions have recently begun — apparently with greater success.
At the end of May, Sudanese Army (SAF) Assistant Commander-in-Chief Yasser al-Atta announced that Sudan and Russia would sign a series of military and economic agreements in the coming weeks.
Strategic change of course
Moscow’s agreement with representatives of the Sudanese state marks a significant change of course. In the disastrous conflict that broke out last year between the The Sudanese army and the rebel Rapid Support Force (RSF), the Kremlin initially supported the RSF, particularly because of the parastatal administration Wagner Group had previously acquired mining rights to Sudan’s gold deposits with the group. These rights are a steady source of foreign currency for Russia as it labors under Western sanctions imposed after it 2022 Full scale invasion of Ukraine.
The military situation in Sudan remains unclear, according to Hager Ali, a political scientist at the German Institute for Global and Regional Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg.
“But Russia obviously now wants to diversify its support to Sudan. Moreover, Port Sudan is in the area controlled by the SAF. If Russia wants a naval base there, it needs to talk to the SAF,” he said.
It is uncertain what impact this would have on the ongoing conflict.
Russia: “Unlimited quality military aid”
In exchange for being allowed to maintain a naval presence in Sudan, Russia appears to have committed to providing military support to the SAF. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov promised the SAF “unlimited quality military assistance,” according to the online magazine Understanding War.
Even in previous years, the Sudanese military would like to have fighter jets such as the SU-30 and SU-35, as well as air defense missiles such as the S-400 system from Russia, said political scientist Andreas Heinemann-Grüder of the Center for Advanced of Security, Strategy and Integration Studies (CASSIS) in the German city of Bonn.
“But until now, the Russians have been skeptical about these wishes. We don’t know if they will now take a different approach or what weapons Russia has offered Sudan in exchange for the naval base,” Heinemann-Grüder told DW.
Russia has quite a good deal of negotiating power, according to Ali: “The longer the conflict goes on, the more weapons the SAF needs. This is especially true for the Sudanese air force, which also has to operate in remote areas. That’s why , they can very well use Russian weapons.”
The same goes for diesel fuel, which has long been in short supply, according to Ali. “For a long time, the fuel was imported by the Wagner militia through Chad,” Ali said, adding that in the future, Russia may be able to deliver it through its new naval base in Sudan.
Analysts at Understanding War write that this base would be a logical continuation of Russia’s military actions across the African continent. Due to Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar Assad, the magazine reports that Russia already has a naval base in Tartus in southern Syria which it uses to send logistical supplies to Africa, and particularly to Libya, which also is in the grips of a civil war.
Libya, in turn, acts as a bridgehead to send more support to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Sudan is another piece in the puzzle of Russia’s strategy for Africa,” Ali explained. The same is true of the arms trade and other Russian involvements on the continent, especially further west. “Moscow is pursuing different interests: short-term, medium-term and long-term,” he added.
Implications for Europe
These goals also have consequences in Europe, Heinemann-Grüder said. “The Russians are using their power to take advantage of the chaos unfolding in various African countries — not just in Sudan. They also support other coup plotters, such as in Yes, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger. There, this cooperation with the coup plotters does not lead to stabilization but, on the contrary, to an escalation of internal conflicts,” he said.
In the case of Sudan, he said he could not rule out mass movements of refugees to Europe.
“This is why Europe could ask, for example, whether development aid to countries controlled by coup d’etats should not be subject to certain conditions – for example, the condition that military cooperation with Russians might have consequences for development cooperation or maybe even for humanitarian cooperation,” he added.
France already did this, the expert explained.
“But overall,” he said, “I don’t see any single Western stance on this issue.”
This article has been adapted from German.