Time for a new dawn in Saudi-Russian relations

King Salman’s Moscow visit will allow two nations to establish closer ties and work together independently of explosive political situations in the Middle East, where their positions will not always converge.

RUSSIA is looking forward with great anticipation to the realization of agreements on the visit of King Salman and we have certain hopes in several directions. Firstly, we expect that the first visit of such toplevel talks and the experience of recent years will provide an impulse to establish more stable relationships between our countries.

Our relations began with a success, as the Soviet Union was the first to recognize the Kingdom of Hijaz and Najd. During the early years we managed to successfully establish trade, economic and political cooperation. But, unfortunately, from the second half of the 1930s our relations have been developing in cycles. At times they have been restored, becoming active, but then, unfortunately, deteriorated once again as various regional and international problems did not allow our countries to cooperate in a proper way in terms of our national interests. For many years, until 1990-1991, our relations were completely frozen.

Today, our primary task is to stabilize our relations and make them independent of explosive situations in the Middle East and around the world when the positions of Riyadh and Moscow do not converge (which is quite natural).

We have an agenda that may have an important impact on the life of people in both Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation. First of all, there are questions related to oil prices. It is encouraging that during the last year and a half we have witnessed something new in our interaction — a transition toward a very efficient dialogue on the issue of pricing. In fact, we became leaders of the negotiation process about the barriers for oil pricing that take place in the format of OPEC and independent oil producers. This process is mainly pushed forward from the two capitals — Riyadh and Moscow.

This is a very promising process and we would like it to allow us to turn single agreements that we previously achieved, and which proved to be effective, into a more efficient formula and to create a predictable market system for oil. This is quite possible — such proposals exist and the concerned parties have to implement them. I believe that cooperation between two oil giants, Saudi Arabia and Russia, should lay in the basis of such a system.

Secondly, our two countries have to cooperate on the innovative technologies of the 21st century. We could start joint research in the domains where our interests are most similar on the basis of the agreements signed in 2003 and according to the capabilities of the parties. These domains are petrochemicals, communication satellites and a number of other questions where we already have some progress that has to be further developed.

I think that the talks will allow us, if not to bring our positions closer, but at least to agree on how we should act in the crises that still exist in the Middle East — in Syria, Yemen and a number of other countries. We were not the ones who created these conflicts and crisis situations. I believe that we should firstly attempt to stabilize the situations in these countries and in the Middle East region as a whole and, secondly, to learn how to prevent our differences from influencing our bilateral cooperation on oil, gas, energy, technology, science and culture. Thus, our bilateral track should be independent from the explosive situations that inevitably emerge in the Middle East.

If we manage to do it, it will be a new model of pragmatic relations. And we would like to become the first ones to build such relations with Saudi Arabia in the 21st century to better exploit the potential of both countries and upgrade the quality of life for people in Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Andrey Baklanov is ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, former ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and chairman of the Russian Association of Diplomats.

Q