On the surface, it is announced next week that Saudi Arabia will hold talks in Jeddah in Ukraine.
The low-level meeting was more neutral in its position after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump’s disastrous meeting last week, making sense in trying to twitch temperatures.
In his night speech on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he will travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet with the country’s crown prince and his team will continue to hold talks with U.S. officials.
The real question, however, is how neutral Saudi Arabia and its crown prince Mohammed bin Salman actually happened and why negotiations were there rather than in the European capital.
The reality is that Saudi Arabia is primarily a comfortable location for the Trump administration. Trump’s first foreign visit in office The first term was the first foreign visit to Saudi Arabia, which is an ambition despite its terrifying human rights record, including the kidnapping and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump believes that the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel is a key award in his attempt to reach a regional-wide peace agreement after the signing of the Abraham Agreement – the bilateral normalization agreement and the agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Baghland – which he pursued during his first term, but had little improvement in his Middle East.
If Trump’s connection to his circle and Saudi Arabia has long been in diplomatic and commercial connections, there is more to see Prince Mohammed’s proximity to Moscow and Vladimir Putin.
In recent years, Putin and the prince attracted by his power in Russia have been reportedly approaching the orbit of the Russian president. According to some analysts, he played a key role in two prisoner exchanges between Russia and the United States, including one who involved journalist Evan Gershkovic last year.
This warm relationship began in 2015, when Prince Mohammed visited the Russian president in St. Petersburg, and then Putin visited Saudi Arabia in 2023.
The relationship between Moscow and Riyadh is becoming increasingly important, as Jens Heibach and Luíza Cerioli pointed out in an article in the contemporary Journal of Contemporary Security Policy that explained Saudi Arabia’s long-standing reluctance to criticize Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia is Riyadh’s “key partner” in the wider OPEC+ and an “important pillar of foreign policy diversification strategies”, they wrote.
They added: “On the one hand, Saudi Arabia voted in favor of adopting the key resolution of the UN General Assembly [the war in Ukraine]including those who condemn Russia’s illegal use of force and its illegal referendum and annexation in Ukraine. On the other hand, the Kingdom seriously violated Russia’s interests by refusing diplomatically. ”
It is worth noting that, as Heibach and Cerioli pointed out, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022: “Saudi Arabia continues to cooperate with Russia within OPEC+ and led the group on October 5, 2022 to decide to reduce oil production by 2m barrels per day, increasing global oil prices and Russian Amisi on average.
“Saudi Arabia refused to do so [the Biden administration’s] Request to use it in the center of OPEC+ in lowering oil prices. The decision was tense with the United States, which was also unhappy with Riyadh’s final formal position on the Ukrainian crisis. ”
This intimacy continues. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia hosted Russian and U.S. delegations – despite a major absence from Kiev, discussing the Ukrainian peace deal, a major reversal of the Biden administration’s efforts to isolate Russia diplomatically.
However, the contrary fact is that Saudi Arabia also held a two-day peace summit in Ukraine with representatives of more than 40 countries, although some skeptics pointed out that it was the same as washing Saudi Arabia’s international reputation.
And if Ukraine feels comfortable holding talks in Jeddah, it is because of the personal connection of the country’s defense minister Rustem Umerov, who, through his former business connection, had his own boundaries with Saudi Arabia as an investment banker.
Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russian and Eurasian programmes at Chatham House Thinktank in London, said these links between Saudi Arabia and Ukraine meant a level of trust.
“I think it’s a myth about the position in the negotiation. In fact, you need to find an actor or mediator who has a trusted stake or contact with both parties,” she said.
“Ukrainians have always believed that the Middle East may be [a] Weighing and investing in relations with the Global South, it is considered a global war because it has global consequences. ”
Lutsevych added that Saudi Arabia owns one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural companies, indicating it may have a “pragmatic interest”.
“One of the Saudis’ motivations [in hosting the talks] She said. “But the greater risk for Zelenskyy and Ukraine remains Trump himself – the risk of the US getting along with Russia’s agenda. That position will not change.”
