Hamdok sends his foreign minister to defuse Russian naval base row

摘要

A contretemps in early May over Russia's naval base in Port Sudan has brought an unwelcome chill to relations between Moscow and Khartoum. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mariam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi is due to meet her counterpart Sergei Lavrov in early June to patch things up. Publicly, there is no diplomatic crisis. Privately, there is a "strong disagreement" between the Russian and Sudanese foreign ministries. The reason for the tension lies in an agreement struck between the regime of deposed president Omar al-Bashir and Vladimir Putin's Russia on establishing a Russian naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Several media outlets reported in early May that the Sudanese authorities had suspended the agreement. These reports were immediately denied by the Russian ambassador in Khartoum, Vladimir Zheltov.