Russia’s Red Sea Rising
By: Daniel Appleby
Tags: History, International Relations, Politics, Future, Analysis

What do Sudan and Russia have in common? If your answer is a naval logistics base at the southern entrance of the Red Sea, then you are on the money. Whilst this strategic alliance, one that provides Russia with a place to house up to three hundred personnel and four warships, seems like an unusual expression of unity between two culturally distinct countries, the historic relationship of the pair trend way back.

In 1961, the thought of pirog in Port Sudan seemed like a distant concept for the five year old independent nation. Sudan had recently joined the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’, a union of developing nations not aligned to any existing power bloc. It remains one of the largest groupings of states globally, second only to the United Nations. Even as the Cold War began to dominate the political landscape, by which time many countries within the Non-Aligned Movement had in fact aligned to either the United States or the USSR, Sudan enjoyed relative neutrality. That changed when the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, keen to avoid another armed conflict with nearly half a million troops bogged down in Vietnam, ramped up diplomatic support for Sudan’s adversary Israel at the height of the ‘Six Day War’. Khartoum severed relations with Washington in the aftermath, and it would take four years coupled with an attempted communist-led coup for them to warm again. During this interlude, over two thousand Soviet advisers had formed a satellite within the fledgling state.

The ascension of two notorious strongmen, military leader Omar al-Bashir who took office in a 1989 coup that removed Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi’s coalition, along with Vladimir Putin to the Russian Presidency, forged the golden age of Sudanese-Russian relations. Gone was the animosity caused after the Soviets provided aid to rivals Ethiopia in the 70’s. Forgotten too was the Sudanese backing of the Mujahadeen amidst the onset of Moscow’s nine year guerrilla war against the group in Afghanistan. This new era has brought over five thousand Sudanese students to Russian university campuses through state-backed scholarships, increased arms trade with Sudan’s forces now 60% kitted out with either Russian or Soviet Union era military hardware, and economic support that has circumvented international sanctions. Moscow has crucially been able to solidify some of Sudan’s economic foundations at the height of domestic catastrophe when the nation- which generates 50% of budget revenue through its oil sector- lost between 75% to 80% of daily output in the secession of South Sudan in 2011. Russian backed infrastructure, such as a 2018 agreement to construct a refinery with the capacity of 220,000 barrel per day, has helped to shore up Sudan’s ability to process South Sudanese oil exports, whilst a 2015 discovery of large gold deposits in two Sudanese provinces by a Russian company reinforced confidence in the nation’s commodity sector.

Sudan is evidently more dependent upon Russian support than the converse, that will likely come as no surprise given the relative standing of the two nations. So what is behind Russia’s involvement in the region, altruism or strategic necessity?