"Russia offered us cooperation, military support and provision of weapons to the army" in exchange for "a supply point on the Red Sea," the deputy commander of the army, Yasser Atta, said in an interview with the private Saudi television station Al Hadath. "We told them that we could extend this military cooperation to economic cooperation in the fields of agriculture, industry, mining and gold exploration, or in ports," continued Atta, who is also a prominent member of the Sovereign Council, the highest governing body controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Yasser Atta also said that a Sudanese military delegation will leave for Moscow in a few days to sign "an agreement," the details of which he did not provide. A ministerial team will then also travel to Russia to prepare for a visit by the President of Sudan's Sovereign Council and SAF Chief of Staff, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Khartoum and Moscow signed an agreement in December 2020 to establish a naval base on the Sudanese coast of the Red Sea, Russia's first on the African continent. The project has not yet moved forward, first due to internal problems resulting from the 2021 coup d'état, and then because of the war that began on April 15, 2023 between the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by another general, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as "Hemedti." The base, whose agreement has a term of 25 years, will allow Russia to station nuclear-powered ships on the African country's coast; it will not be able to accommodate more than four warships at a time; and it will have a maximum capacity of 300 military and civilian personnel, according to the agreement document. "Personally, I don't mind giving a military base to Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. There is no problem with that, on the contrary, the benefits are exchanged between the peoples (...). The Red Sea coast is wide enough to accommodate Russia, the United States, Egypt or China, I don't know what the problem is," said Yasser Atta. Several think tanks and non-governmental organizations have made public the supply of various types of weapons by Russia - mainly drones - to the Sudanese army since the start of the war a year ago, but also the support of the RSF by the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, now renamed Africa Corps. Read Also: Biden reaffirms decision not to send soldiers to Ukraine (Portuguese version)