Russian President Vladimir Putin approved on Nov. 16 the government’s plans to create a naval facility in Sudan to service the needs of the Russian navy in the region and serve as a logistics center. The Russian Defense Ministry signed the respective agreement on the facility construction with Khartoum. Given the character of Russian authorities’ decision-making, most experts believe the decision concerning the establishment of the facility had been taken long before its formal announcement. The question, then, is the pace of the facility’s construction, something that will largely depend on the Kremlin’s priorities moving forward. And there are factors that can prompt one to be at least somewhat doubtful as to whether Russia is really all that serious about expanding its footprint in the region.

The first factor in this context is Russia’s constrained economic, military and logistical capabilities. According to the former chief of staff of the Russian navy, retired Adm. Viktor Kravchenko, the most primitive facility in the Red Sea will take three to four months to be completed.

As already noted by Al-Monitor, no concrete details of Russia’s presence in the Red Sea have been divulged so far. More to the point, we do not yet know what sort of base Russia would like to establish in Port Sudan. For example, the Soviet-era logistical facility in Vietnam had in reality served as a proper military base. Does Russia intend to deploy a full-scale facility containing infrastructure for military purposes? Or is this new base just a PR stunt that would merely be comprised of facilities providing occasional service to Russian ships, which are rare in the region anyway? The agreement for easing the passage of Russian ships was reached with Sudan last January, although Moscow has this sort of agreement with many countries — including Nicaragua, a wayward US ally.

There are objective obstacles that may stand in the way of the speedy deployment of the facility. All of the means to protect the base — air defense systems, the tools of electronic warfare together with the infrastructure equipment for social purposes (hospital unit, desalination units) — can be delivered in one of two ways. First, those components can be airlifted to Port Sudan 20 kilometers from the shore by transiting through Khmeimim air base, the route used by the Russian military as an "African hub." The other option is using the sea route. The difficulty, of course, is that Russia does not have many ships for long-distance travel at its disposal, even if we take into account the possibility for those ships to be serviced at Syria’s Russian naval base Tartus.