Burhan offers Russia mining sites and a Red Sea zone as an Abu Dhabi court jails eight for arming his army
The Sudanese army chief went to Moscow with the war economy in hand. Three days earlier, a UAE court handed life sentences to men it said sold weapons to the SAF.
Sudan Tribune reported from Moscow on Friday that Sovereign Council chairman and army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told Vladimir Putin his country is ready to offer Russia new mining sites and a Red Sea free economic zone, with Putin saying he was ready to cooperate with Khartoum. The meeting is confirmed; what is not established is whether anything was signed, or whether the long-running question of a Russian naval facility at Port Sudan was raised. The offer is made against a gold economy whose official half is already substantial: the state-owned Sudanese Mineral Resources Company said on 6 October that gold exports through official channels earned US$2.292 billion from January to September 2026 — Port Sudan’s own number, for the trade it can see. The analytical outlet IR Insider cites estimates that 50 to 70 percent of Sudanese gold is smuggled out each year, a share that has risen since the war began as both belligerents became economically dependent on gold.
On 29 October, Al Jazeera reported that a UAE court sentenced eight defendants to life in prison over arms supplies to Sudan’s army, with the court order stating that the “arms deals, money laundering endangered UAE interests.” Names, nationalities and counterparties were not disclosed in the reporting available. Abu Dhabi’s position throughout the war has been that it arms neither side. Separately, Al Jazeera published what it billed as an exclusive video on 30 October in which senior RSF commander Siddiq Ander announced his defection, describing the RSF as a “purely family-based project” and accusing Hemedti of running the group like a family business. Al Jazeera reported it as the latest in a run of departures, including Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Azraq al-Fanjari, who announced on 8 October that he was leaving with 300 officers and soldiers.
Assessment: Burhan is selling the one asset that survives a war: subsoil rights and a coastline. Moscow’s readout has diverged from Port Sudan’s before, so read “offer” as an offer until the Kremlin says otherwise. The Emirati convictions are the week’s genuine oddity — a state widely accused of supplying the RSF prosecuting men for supplying the SAF — but note the charge is harm to UAE interests, not neutrality enforcement; it is a jurisdictional statement, not a disavowal. As for Ander: a defection released to a single outlet read in Port Sudan as SAF-friendly, with no RSF response, is an information operation whatever its truth content. CFR’s tracker logged it from Al Jazeera; that is aggregation, not corroboration.