President Putin visits UAE and Saudi Arabia, to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the UAE and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and will hold talks with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a rare trip abroad to discuss oil, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia (OPEC+) and the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

The meeting between President Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose countries pump one-fifth of the world’s oil, comes after oil prices declined despite a pledge by the OPEC+ to further curtail supply.

President Putin is due to hold talks with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi and then travel to Saudi Arabia for his first face-to-face meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since October 2019.

President Putin’s top priorities

The Kremlin said they would discuss energy cooperation, including as part of OPEC+, whose members pump more than 40 per cent of the world’s oil.

“Close Russian-Saudi coordination in this format is a reliable guarantee of maintaining a stable and predictable situation in the global oil market,” the Kremlin said.

They will also discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict, the situation in Syria and Yemen, and broader issues of stability in the GCC region, the Kremlin said. A Kremlin aide said Ukraine would also be discussed.

Relations between Saudi and Russia within the OPEC+ cooperation have at times been uneasy and a deal on cuts almost broke down in March 2020, when the markets were already shaken by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Saudi Arabia at the time slashed oil prices for its clients, while Russia said it would be free of any obligations to stick to production quotas.

But the two nations managed to patch up their relations within weeks and OPEC+ agreed to record cuts of almost 10 per cent of global oil demand, to prop up the oil markets.

President Putin praised Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in October and said that if there were differences on extending OPEC+ cuts, then the Kremlin would seek consensus.

Read: OPEC+: GCC’s Saudi, UAE, Kuwait and Oman to cut oil outputs