{"id":1311,"date":"2023-12-06T16:28:24","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T16:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/?p=1311"},"modified":"2023-12-06T17:31:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T17:31:34","slug":"putin-flanked-by-russian-fighters-jets-into-middle-east-to-meet-saudi-mbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/putin-flanked-by-russian-fighters-jets-into-middle-east-to-meet-saudi-mbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin, flanked by Russian fighters, jets into Middle East to meet Saudi MBS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">President Vladimir Putin was escorted to the Middle East by four Russian fighter jets on Wednesday for a rare trip abroad, during which he will discuss oil, Gaza and Ukraine with Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman,\u00a0<i>Reuters<\/i>\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n<p>Putin\u2019s meeting with the Prince, known as MBS, comes after oil prices fell despite a pledge by OPEC+, which groups the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia, to further cut output.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"und\" dir=\"rtl\">\ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\ud83c\udde6 \u0627\u0644\u0631\u0626\u064a\u0633 \u0627\u0644\u0631\u0648\u0633\u064a \u0641\u0644\u0627\u062f\u064a\u0645\u064a\u0631 \u0628\u0648\u062a\u064a\u0646 \u064a\u0635\u0644 \u0625\u0644\u0649 \u0627\u0644\u0631\u064a\u0627\u0636 \u0641\u064a \u0632\u064a\u0627\u0631\u0629 \u0639\u0645\u0644\ud83d\udcf9 \u00a9 \u0623\u062e\u0628\u0627\u0631 \u0627\u0644\u0643\u0631\u0645\u0644\u064a\u0646<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\ud83c\udde6 President of Russia Vladimir Putin arrives to Riyadh on a working visit\ud83d\udcf9 \u00a9 Kremlin News <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1ya9BPGnqv\">pic.twitter.com\/1ya9BPGnqv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Diplomatique.ma \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0628\u0644\u0648\u0645\u0627\u0633\u064a\u0629 (@diplomatique_ma) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/diplomatique_ma\/status\/1732450730324140541?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 6, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Kremlin chief\u2019s plane was flanked by Sukhoi-35S fighter jets, which the Defence Ministry showed flying beside his Ilyushin-96 aircraft from Russia to the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In Abu Dhabi, President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan welcomed his \u201cdear friend\u201d and UAE jets greeted the Kremlin chief with a fly-past trailing the colours of Russia\u2019s flag.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOur relations, largely due to your position, have reached an unprecedentedly high level,\u201d Putin told him. \u201cThe UAE is Russia\u2019s main trading partner in the Arab world.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"zp5Hz6EFQD0\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"UAE President hosts a state reception for President of Russia\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zp5Hz6EFQD0?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Russian delegation includes top oil, economy, foreign affairs, space and nuclear energy officials.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Putin said Russia and the UAE cooperated as part of OPEC+, whose members pump more than 40 per cent of the world\u2019s oil, adding that they would discuss the Israeli-Palestine conflict and Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After the UAE, Putin is due to 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It was not immediately clear what Putin, who has rarely left Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, intends to raise specifically about oil or geopolitics with the Crown Prince of the world\u2019s largest crude exporter.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The trip to meet MbS, just days after a key OPEC+ meeting was delayed, appeared rushed. One source had told\u00a0<i>Reuters<\/i>\u00a0beforehand that MbS had plans to visit Moscow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Putin, who last visited the region in mid-2022, is due to host his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, in Moscow on Thursday.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Putin and MBS<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Kremlin said that, as well as oil, Putin and MbS would talk about the war between Israel and Hamas, the situation in Syria and Yemen, and issues such as ensuring stability in the Gulf, while an aide said Ukraine would also be discussed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Putin and MbS, who together control one-fifth of the oil pumped each day, have long enjoyed close relations, though both have, at times, been ostracised by the West.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At a G20 summit in 2018, just two month after the murder of journalist,\u00a0Jamal Khashoggi, in a Saudi consulate, Putin and MbS high-fived and shook hands with smiles.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">MbS, 38, has sought to reassert Saudi Arabia as a regional power with less deference to the United States, which supplies Riyadh with most of its weapons and which is the world\u2019s top producer of oil.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Putin, who sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, says Russia is engaged in an existential battle with the West \u2013 and has courted allies across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia, amid Western attempts to isolate Moscow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Both MbS and Putin, 71, want \u2013 and need \u2013 high prices for oil \u2013 the lifeblood of their economies. The question for both is how much of the burden each should take on to keep prices aloft \u2013 and how to verify the burden.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>OPEC+<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">OPEC+, last month, delayed its meeting by several days due to disagreements over production levels. Saudi\u2019s Energy Minister said OPEC+ also wanted more assurances from Moscow it would make good on its pledge to reduce fuel exports.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Relations between Saudi and Russia in OPEC+ have, at times, been uneasy and a deal on cuts almost broke down in March 2020, with markets already shaken by the onset of the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But the two managed to patch up their relations within weeks and OPEC+ agreed to record cuts of almost 10 per cent of global demand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in October, Putin has cast the conflict as a failure of US policy in the Middle East and has fostered ties with Arab allies and Iran, as well as with the\u00a0 Palestinian group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Vladimir Putin was escorted to the Middle East by four Russian fighter jets on Wednesday for a rare trip abroad, during which he will discuss oil, Gaza and Ukraine with Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman,\u00a0Reuters\u00a0reports. Putin\u2019s meeting with the Prince, known as MBS, comes after oil prices fell despite a pledge by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,41],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-asia-americas","8":"category-middle-east"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diplomatique.ma\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}