In Yemen, Russia Drops Political Diplomacy to Support Houthi Militants

Viktor Bout, the Russian “Merchant of Death” arms dealer, who returned to Russia two years ago in a prisoner swap for US basketball star Brittney Griner, appears to have resumed his old trade. This time, he is reportedly arranging small arms transfers to the rebel group in Yemen, raising concerns that Russia could also supply antiship and antiair missiles to the Red Sea region, further complicating efforts to protect shipping in the Red Sea. 

If the reports are substantiated, the arms sales would mark a radical departure from Soviet and Russian relations with Yemen over the past sixty years. Rather than focusing on the long-term fostering of relations with national organizations around the world through construction projects, modernization, and politically driven programming, as was the Soviet approach, Russian foreign policy, at least in Yemen, has sunk to the level of seeking short-term gains through the sale of arms and the promotion of regional violence. Soviet development diplomacy has been replaced by Russian weapons diplomacy, a sign of desperation and further evidence that Russian grand strategy is in historic disrepair. 

Moscow’s Geostrategic Interests in Yemen

Since the early years of the Cold War, Soviet and subsequently Russian Federation geostrategic interests have focused on the southern Red Sea region. While the reasons for this interest have changed over time to include support for anticolonialist movements, oil field exploration, security of shipping lanes, and access to East Africa, Yemen has been at the center of Russia’s involvement in the region. 

Russian-Yemeni relations began in earnest in 1956 when the crown prince of North Yemen, Muhammad al-Badr, led an official Yemeni delegation to Moscow, marking the first visit of an Arab leader to the Soviet Union. What followed was seven years of Soviet-Yemeni friendship, highlighted by the Soviet-led construction of a modern port in the western coastal city of Hodeida and the export of modern mechanized machinery to a country referred to by Soviet diplomats as “feudal” and underdeveloped. 

In exchange, the Soviets received privileged access to the Hodeida port, which acted as a transshipment point to Africa. Soviet-Yemeni friendship was celebrated by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Crown Prince al-Badr, who enthusiastically promulgated a vision of rapid Soviet-led modernization and the adoption of socialist principles for the Yemeni people, earning al-Badr the moniker of the “Red Prince”.

Civil War in North Yemen: The 26 September Revolution

The Soviet Union’s Yemen strategy fell into turmoil when the September 1962 Revolution overthrew the USSR’s erstwhile communist ally, who had only recently succeeded his father as the religiously anointed imam ruler of North Yemen. 

With al-Badr presumed dead, Soviet delegates were left with little choice but to throw their support behind the nascent Yemeni republic, lest they risk losing access to the Hodeida port. When al-Badr unexpectedly emerged alive two months later, it was too late for the Soviets to renege on their reluctant support for the Yemeni republic. Over the next five years, North Yemen would descend into a bloody civil war pitting al-Badr and his royalist northern tribal allies against Egyptian-supported Yemeni republicans.

Rather than rely on Egyptian intermediaries, the Soviet Foreign Office embarked on a direct campaign to win the hearts and minds of local Yemenis by investing resources in local education, infrastructure, and entertainment. Russian tourists, teachers, and journalists visited Yemen regularly, and Russian musicians performed in the first European-style concert in Sana’a in October 1964 in front of an audience in the thousands that included influential Yemeni politicians. 

With an eye toward investing in a long-term relationship, Soviet engineers embarked on a large-scale expansion of the Hodeida port to accommodate more Soviet vessels. Yemenis were given fellowships to study in Moscow, while Soviet teachers and doctors volunteered in Yemeni schools and hospitals for two-month rotations, a practice Russia continued through the 2010s. Russo-Yemeni relations reached such a point that colleagues regularly referred to each other as tovarishch or sadik, the Russian and Arabic equivalents of “comrade.”

An Arab Communist State in South Arabia

A victory by more conservative elements in the Yemeni republic following the 1968 siege of Sana’a initially portended a strategic defeat for Soviet relations in South Arabia. A simultaneous rebellion in South Yemen, however, presented the Soviet Union with an even more valuable prize. In 1967, when the British Empire was forced to withdraw from the Yemeni port city of Aden, its only official Middle Eastern colony, the Yemeni state that emerged declared itself to be the first and only Arab communist state. 

The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen subsequently became a staunch ally of the Soviet Union, which invested heavily in Yemeni infrastructure and education, receiving in exchange exclusive access to Aden, one of the most valuable ports in the region. South Yemen became a socialist haven for women’s rights and secular education, enjoyed nowhere else in the Arabian Peninsula. Aden even sported the Arabian Peninsula’s only brewery in the Seera Beer factory. 

Aden itself became a haven for anti-Western terrorists and dissidents, serving as a headquarters for such groups as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Venezuelan revolutionary and assassin Carlos the Jackal. Until the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, the Soviet Union continued to utilize the port of Aden as a valuable naval base and the launching pad for the spread of communist ideology across the African continent. 

Post-Soviet Relations (1991–2024) 

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia continued to maintain its relationship with the active Yemen Socialist Party and with Yemeni politicians more generally. Until 2024, however, the Russians did not appear to be heavily invested in the Yemen conflict. Opportunity apparently came knocking when Houthi militants sought Russian armaments and support in exchange for the guarantee of safety granted to Russian shipping passing through the southern Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb strait. 

Rather than sending a delegation of Russian engineers to meet with the Houthis to discuss plans for Yemeni reconstruction and modernization, Russia sent Viktor Bout, whose modernization efforts are limited to those conducted via the barrel of a gun. Lacking foreign currency, the Houthi movement paid the Merchant of Death in the currency of the lives of Yemeni civilians. Numerous reports have emerged of Yemeni youth being forcibly recruited to serve in the Russian army on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Two Epochs, One Goal

During the 1960s, the Soviet Union aided Yemeni revolutionaries in constructing a new society, albeit one built on Marxist and communist principles. In 2024, Russia is once again aiding Yemeni revolutionaries, although this time in deconstructing their own society as Houthi militants continue to embroil the country’s population in a regional conflict with the United States and Israel, empowered by weapons and political support received from Iranian and Russian sources. And yet, Russia’s shift from ideological diplomacy to weapons diplomacy in Yemen tells us far more about the decline in Russian global influence than it does about the decline in Yemeni society. Perhaps the lost “hearts and minds” of a bygone era are those of Russian grand strategists rather than their targeted populations abroad. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.