Immediately after concluding his official commitments in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russian President Vladimir Putin left for Riyadh to participate in the extended talks and later in a one-on-one meeting with the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (MBS) on December 06, 2023.[1]
As mentioned in the first part of this issue brief series, both of Putin’s visits (to the UAE and Saudi Arabia) were conducted within the time span of twenty-four hours, since the Russian President had to return to Moscow for a meeting with the Iranian President the very next day.[2]
President Putin’s visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was his sixth foreign visit in the year 2023 and his first to the Kingdom since 2019. The Russian President travelled to KSA with the same delegation that accompanied him during his working visit to the UAE which mainly consisted of representatives of the business community, state officials in charge of economic portfolios and executives from state-owned corporations and businesses, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
