Putin makes rare visit to the Middle East
With his plane flanked by four fighter jets, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday embarked on a rare trip to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, two oil-rich Gulf states that have resisted pressure to take sides in the war in Ukraine.
Mr Putin said his talks in the region would touch on international crises, especially Israel’s two-month war with Hamas – a conflict that has affected his geopolitical goals by distracting Western leaders from the war in Ukraine.
Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan called Putin his “dear friend” at the start of their talks, while the Russian leader praised the relationship between the two countries.
“Without a doubt, I will inform you about the situation regarding the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin told the Emirati leader in televised remarks.
Upon arriving in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, Mr Putin was greeted with pomp and ceremony: his limousine drove through the grounds of a sprawling palace, flanked by camels and Arab horses whose riders held Russian flags. Jets followed the Russian tricolor in the sky and Putin was also welcomed with a 21-gun salute, the Emirates state news agency reported.
Among the Emirati officials in the delegation that received the Russian leader was Sultan Al Jaber, the head of Abu Dhabi’s state oil company and the president of COP28, the United Nations climate summit currently underway in the neighboring emirate Dubai, the state news agency said.
Putin’s trip, unexpectedly announced by the Kremlin on Tuesday, came amid signs of waning support in the United States for Ukraine, which is frantically trying to secure more Western aid for its efforts to drive Russian troops from its territory.
Before his visit to Abu Dhabi, Putin had not traveled beyond China, Iran and the former Soviet states since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
By late Wednesday afternoon, he had left the Emirates to go to Saudi Arabia and talk to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader.
A prominent Emirati political scientist, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, downplayed the significance of Putin’s visit to the Emirates, describing it as “symbolic.”
Mr Abdulla said the Russian leader “has very few friends” while the Emiratis “want to be a friend to everyone”.
In recent years, the Emirates has shaped its foreign policy around hedging against its dependence on the United States.
The Emirati leader has traveled to Russia twice in the past two years, and his country was feted as a guest of honor at Putin’s main investment forum in June.
The Saudi crown prince has also maintained close ties with Putin since the invasion of Ukraine, despite pressure from Western powers to isolate Russia. He has positioned himself as a potential mediator in the conflict.
Putin’s talks in the Middle East were the first of a series of diplomatic meetings planned for this week. On Thursday, the Russian leader will receive President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran, the leader of another major player in the region, in Moscow.
The outbreak of war in Gaza has diverted attention from Ukraine and allowed the Kremlin to gain the sympathy of people in many developing countries where support for the Palestinian cause is widespread.
Mr Putin condemned the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the armed group that rules Gaza, which Israeli authorities said killed 1,200 people. He called it a terrorist act and sought to maintain working ties with Israel, while also arguing that the dominance of Western elites allowed the crisis to happen in the first place.
Sadness and anger have spread in Arab countries since the Israeli army responded to the Hamas attack by bombing and invading Gaza, home to more than 2 million Palestinians.
The attack killed more than 16,000 people in Gaza – a bombing campaign of an intensity that has few precedents in this century. At protests across the Middle East, people have expressed anger not only at Israel, but also at the United States, Israel’s main international backer.
“We have seen anti-Americanism at an all-time high,” said Mr. Abdulla, the Emirati political scientist.
But it is unclear how much Mr Putin will stand to gain from this.
Mr Abdulla said that despite the anger against the United States, one of the most important messages that Arab states had received since the war was that “America is back” – militarily and politically – after a long period in which regional leaders worried that American interest in their region was waning.
“There is very little that Putin can add to the situation in Gaza,” Mr. Abdulla said, describing Russia as “irrelevant” to that war, in which the United States has been the dominant international player.