Russia’s Red Sea Rising

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…