After years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Sudan has agreed to let Russia establish its first naval base on the continent along the war-torn country’s Red Sea coast.
“We are in complete agreement on this matter, and there are no obstacles,” Foreign Minister Ali Youssif said at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow on February 12.
After the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the country’s new government terminated a treaty that had granted a long-term lease for Russia’s only foreign naval base. The Kremlin has stepped up efforts since then to establish new strategic assets in Africa.
But experts say there are plenty of obstacles that could prevent the naval base in Sudan from becoming a reality. Middle East political analyst Platon Nikiforov said Moscow’s latest attempt at a presence on the Red Sea “is fraught with challenges.”
“The Kremlin’s efforts to secure a permanent and official military agreement in the region with anyone other than Assad remain far from realization,” he wrote in a February 25 article in online journal Riddle Russia.
The military government of Sudan has wavered on its Red Sea plans for years and recently canceled a $6 billion port deal with the United Arab Emirates over the UAE’s alleged weapons transfers to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Sudanese militia that has been fighting government forces since April 2023.
“After what happened, we will not give the UAE a single centimeter on the Red Sea coast,” SAF Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim told local media in Port Sudan in November 2024.
Russia’s original 2017 deal allowed for 300 military personnel and four ships in Port Sudan. The parties signed a preliminary agreement in 2020 to establish a Russian naval logistics hub with the capacity to dock nuclear-powered vessels, but Sudanese authorities left the plan in limbo.
One of the world’s most strategically important waterways, the Red Sea connects the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean with about 12% of international trade passing through.
It’s another key target in Russia’s efforts to further project influence in Africa, as it has worked to build new bases and expand others, such as in southeastern Libya near the borders with Chad and Sudan.
A base on the Red Sea, in addition to its potential defense and geopolitical value, would provide Russia with significant influence over oil and gas shipping lanes that are vital to global commerce.
Nikiforov noted several high-cost challenges that Moscow will face in establishing a new naval base: long-range transportation of heavy equipment, machinery and weapons systems; the lack of a reliable power plant with the capacity to power a large, new installation; and the need to dredge the coast.
“It’s hard to say whether Moscow, fixated on restoring bases as an essential attribute of a military superpower, initially assessed the risks or simply acted on inertia,” he wrote. “Even before the change of power in Syria and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, supplying a facility in Sudan was no simple task. Now, it’s even more complex.”
Russia would face tremendous logistical challenges in transporting air-defense and electronic-warfare systems for the base, along with infrastructure needs such as a desalination plant, Nikiforov said, noting that Russia’s capacity for “cargo tonnage on direct flights without transit stops is severely limited.”
Another option is via naval cargo vessels, but Russia has few long-range warships available for escort — a necessity after one of its cargo ships was attacked and sunk off the coast of Algeria in December 2024.
With just one 337-megawatt diesel-mazut thermal power plant, energy supply in Port Sudan already is a substantial challenge and would present Moscow with another huge hurdle. Sudanese Energy and Petroleum Minister Muhyiddin al-Naim Said recently noted that the port deal included a request for Russia to send floating platforms to support the city’s power supply.
“The Russian facility would need to rely on self-sufficiency via base-installed diesel generators [as it did at its former Khmeimim Airbase in Syria], with fuel imported from Russia due to high local petroleum costs,” Nikiforov wrote.
Russia alone is also incapable of meeting another need — extensive dredging in the waters surrounding a potential naval base — which would require an expensive contract with a corporation or international partner capable of a major project.
“Port Sudan’s infrastructure, and that of the Red Sea generally, isn’t suited for mooring and servicing nuclear submarines,” Nikiforov wrote.
Perhaps more problematic to Russia’s goal of construction of the base and keeping it over the agreed-upon 25-year lease is Sudan’s uncertain political future. In a March 6 article for the Jamestown Foundation research institute, analyst James McGregor pointed out major, ongoing differences between the civil and military components of the de facto government.
“There is broad opposition to the unelected leaders of the Transitional Sovereignty Council and Sudanese Armed Forces making a deal with major implications for Sudanese sovereignty,” he wrote. “As the deal cannot presently be ratified by any elected body in Sudan, there is a strong possibility that a future government (elected or otherwise) might reject the deal entirely as having no legal legitimacy.”
Mali-based analyst Ulf Laessing, head of Sahel Program at the KAS Africa think tank, remains highly skeptical.
“With Russia’s naval base at Port Sudan it’s best to believe when you see it,” he posted on X. “For a start, why should Burhan agree as his battlefield fortunes are improving? [It] would make more sense to make Moscow wait to extract more military assistance.”