- Putin will meet with Supreme Leader Khamenei
- Putin to meet with Iranian and Turkish presidents
- Russia to talk about Ukrainian grain
- The Turkish threat of the operation in Syria in focus
LONDON / DUBAI, July 18 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Tehran on Tuesday for a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the Kremlin chief’s first trip out of the former Soviet Union since the invasion of Ukraine.
Putin presents the West’s attempt to soften Russia’s economy with the most severe sanctions in recent history as a declaration of economic war and says Russia is moving away from the West to China, India and Iran.
Just three days after US President Joe Biden ended his visit to Saudi Arabia, Russia’s supreme leader arrives in Tehran to hold his fifth meeting with Khamenei, Iran’s second highest-ranking leader. power in 1989.
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“Contact with Khamenei is very important,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, told reporters in Moscow. “A dialogue of trust has developed between them on the most important issues on the bilateral and international agenda.”
“On most issues, our positions are close or identical.”
Putin’s visit to Iran will coincide with that of Turkish Tayyip Erdogan, and the two leaders will meet in Tehran to discuss an agreement aimed at resuming grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea and the threat of Erdogan to launch another operation in northern Syria that Moscow opposes. Read more
In Syria, Russia and Iran prevailed in their support of President Bashar al-Assad against the West, which has repeatedly called for his overthrow since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
GO EAST?
The 69-year-old Kremlin leader has made few trips abroad in recent years due to the COVID pandemic and after the crisis triggered by his invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. His last trip beyond the former Soviet Union was to China in February.
On his way to the Islamic Republic to make his first major trip abroad since the Ukrainian war, Putin sends a clear message to the West that Russia will try to establish ties with Iran, an enemy of the United States since of the 1979 Revolution.
Prior to the trip, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia and Iran had long been subject to Western sanctions: the price, he said, of sovereignty.
For Tehran, establishing ties with Putin’s Russia is a way to balance U.S. influence and its alliances across the Gulf with Arab and Israeli rulers. Putin will meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, elected last year.
“We need a strong ally and Moscow is a superpower,” said a senior Iranian official, who asked not to be identified.
Encouraged by high oil prices, Tehran is betting that with Russia’s support it could pressure Washington to offer concessions for the reactivation of a 2015 nuclear deal.
Still, Russia’s inclination toward Beijing has significantly reduced Iran’s crude exports to China, a key source of revenue for Tehran since President Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions in 2018.
UKRAINE AND SYRIA
Talks with Erdogan will focus on a plan to re-move Ukrainian grain exports and Turkey’s threat to launch new military operations in Syria to extend “safe zones” 30 km (20 miles) deep along from the border.
“Discussions with Putin will focus on grain, Syria and Ukraine,” said a senior Turkish official who asked for anonymity. “Talks will try to resolve issues over cereal exports.”
Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations are expected to sign an agreement later this week with the aim of resuming the shipment of grain from Ukraine across the Black Sea. Read more
Any Turkish operation in Syria would attack the Kurdish YPG militia, a key part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that controls large parts of northern Syria and which Washington considers an important ally against the Islamic State.
The senior Turkish official said Turkey’s planned operation will be discussed, as well as reports that Russia and the Kurds were acting together in some areas of Syria.
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Additional report by Orhan Coskun in Ankara; Written by Guy Faulconbridge, edited by William Maclean
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