- Putin meets with MbS
- Putin meets Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
- Russian fighters escort Putin’s plane
- Putin begins a rare trip to the Middle East
- Oil, OPEC+, Gaza, Ukraine on the agenda
MOSCOW, Dec 6 (Portal) – President Vladimir Putin was escorted by four Russian warplanes on Wednesday on a rare foreign trip to the Middle East during which he will discuss oil, Gaza and Ukraine with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Putin’s meeting with the prince known as MbS comes after oil prices fell despite a commitment from OPEC+, which includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies led by Russia, to further cut output.
The Kremlin chief’s plane was flanked by Sukhoi-35S fighter jets that the Defense Ministry flew from Russia to the United Arab Emirates alongside its Ilyushin-96 aircraft.
In Abu Dhabi, President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan greeted his “dear friend” and UAE jets greeted the Kremlin chief with a flypast in the colors of the Russian flag.
“Our relations have reached an unprecedented high level, largely thanks to your position,” Putin told him. “The UAE is Russia’s most important trading partner in the Arab world.”
The Russian delegation includes high-ranking representatives from the fields of oil, economics, foreign policy, space and nuclear energy.
Putin said Russia and the United Arab Emirates had cooperated within OPEC+, whose members pump more than 40% of the world’s oil, adding that they would talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict and Ukraine.
After the United Arab Emirates, Putin will travel to Saudi Arabia for his first face-to-face meeting with MbS since October 2019. His last visit to the region was in July 2022, when he met Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.
It was not immediately clear what Putin, who has rarely left Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, planned to discuss specifically about oil or geopolitics with the crown prince of the world’s largest crude exporter.
The trip to meet with MbS, just days after the postponement of a key OPEC+ meeting, seemed rushed. A source had previously told Portal that MbS had plans to visit Moscow.
Putin, who last visited the region in mid-2022, will receive his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Thursday.
[1/4]United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a meeting at Qasr Al Watan in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, December 6, 2023. Sputnik/Sergei Savostyanov/Pool acquire license rights via Portal
PUTIN AND MBS
The Kremlin said that in addition to oil, Putin and MbS would also discuss the war between Israel and Hamas, the situation in Syria and Yemen and issues such as ensuring stability in the Gulf, while an adviser said Ukraine would also be discussed.
Putin and MbS, who together control a fifth of the oil produced daily, have long enjoyed close ties, although both have at times been ostracized by the West.
At a G20 summit in 2018, just two months after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate, Putin and MbS smiled and shook hands.
MbS, 38, has sought to re-establish Saudi Arabia as a regional power with less regard for the United States, which supplies Riyadh with most of its weapons and is the world’s largest oil producer.
Putin, who sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022, says Russia is in an existential battle with the West – and has courted allies in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia in the face of Western attempts to isolate Moscow.
Both MbS and Putin, 71, want – and need – high prices for oil – the lifeblood of their economies. The question for both is how much burden each person should take on to keep prices high – and how the burden can be checked.
OPEC+
OPEC+ postponed its meeting for several days last month due to disagreements over production levels. The Saudi energy minister said OPEC+ also wanted more assurances from Moscow that it would keep its promise to reduce fuel exports.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Russia in OPEC+ have been troubled at times and an agreement on cuts almost collapsed in March 2020 as markets were already rattled by the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
But the two managed to mend their ties within weeks, and OPEC+ agreed to record cuts of nearly 10% of global demand.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October, Putin has characterized the conflict as a failure of U.S. policy in the Middle East and has cultivated ties with Arab allies and Iran, as well as the Palestinian militant group.
Edited by Guy Faulconbridge, Andrew Osborn, Bernadette Baum and Alexander Smith
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