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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Whereas everybody else was making an attempt to rescue the world from local weather disaster, Vladimir Putin was negotiating Russia’s oil exports down the street.
Because the COP28 local weather talks in Dubai reached their scheduled midway level on Wednesday, the Russian chief landed discreetly simply 150 kilometers away. His vacation spot, nonetheless, was not the worldwide discussion board the place officers have been debating the way forward for fossil fuels.
It was Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ capital, the place Putin started a fast tour of two vital enterprise companions. First up, Putin’s Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Then, it was over to Riyad to see Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
If not intentional, Putin’s timing definitely appeared designed to thumb his nostril on the international talks taking place lower than a 90-minute drive away. His presence introduced a symbolic break up display screen: Negotiators haggling over how you can wean the world off fossil fuels in a single body, and Putin with each purpose to maintain them flowing within the different.
Russia’s oil, in fact, has been protecting Moscow afloat since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine final yr, offering constant income the Kremlin can draw from to cowl its rising army prices. However oil costs have slipped just lately, leaving Russia in a standoff over how you can handle output with nations just like the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Over at COP28, Putin’s uncommon international galavant introduced out the protesters.
“Don’t you dare come to COP,” warned one among a number of indicators held by local weather activists from the Fridays For Future motion. “Fossil dictators out,” declared one other.
And, extra bluntly: “Fuck Putin.”
Contained in the venue, although, Putin’s proximity barely registered.
“Aside from your mentioning it right here, I’d kind of forgotten that he may be coming to the area,” United States local weather envoy John Kerry stated, answering a query from POLITICO at a press briefing. “Nevertheless it doesn’t have an effect on us right here.”
European Union local weather chief Wopke Hoekstra instructed POLITICO it was “as much as those that obtain him to elucidate why they suppose that’s a good suggestion.”
Putin, Hoekstra added, “has been condemned by a overwhelming majority of the U.N. and he’s needed within the Hague for battle crimes. So from the European perspective, there could be no enterprise as typical.”
Russian oil conundrum
Putin’s go to comes at a tense time for Russia’s relations with fossil fuel-rich Gulf states.
After hitting document highs of greater than $120 per barrel within the wake of Moscow’s invasion, oil costs have been on the slide. In a bid to maintain costs excessive, members of the OPEC+ oil producers cartel have agreed to slash manufacturing, squeezing provides.
Simply final week, Saudi Arabia stated it might prolong into 2024 a pledge to drop every day exports by 1,000,000 barrels, whereas the UAE has lower every day output by 163,000.
Nevertheless, Western sanctions — which embrace a $60 value cap on Russian oil — are forcing Moscow to maintain its crude flowing to plug holes in its funds and pay for its battle in Ukraine. They’ve additionally led Russia to closely improve exports of oil merchandise to each Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
And regardless of pledging to implement manufacturing cuts, Russia — an OPEC+ member — has failed to satisfy the targets it has promised this yr and saved output comparatively constant, analysts say.
Forward of the go to, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated oil was “at all times on the agenda” when officers from the three nations work together, state-owned newswire Ria Novosti reported. And Yuri Ushakov, one among Putin’s advisers, instructed Russian media that the Kremlin thought-about the negotiations “extraordinarily necessary.”
Putin buttered up his hosts a bit earlier than beginning his talks within the UAE, boasting in regards to the “unprecedented excessive stage” of Russian-UAE commerce relations after touchdown in Abu Dhabi, based on Ria Novosti.
The UAE’s overseas ministry didn’t instantly reply a request for remark.
COP controversies
Putin’s COP-adjacent drop-in is the newest twist for a summit that has confronted months of controversy over the choice to carry the talks within the oil-rich UAE.
A bundle of paperwork launched shortly earlier than the convention began indicated the UAE was scheming to make use of its place because the occasion’s host to strike fossil gas offers with overseas governments, casting doubts on its capacity to supervise the occasion. COP28 President Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, additionally the CEO of the UAE’s state-owned oil agency, has firmly rejected the allegations.
Putin has made a behavior of dodging local weather summits. He didn’t attend the final two COPs, held in Glasgow, Scotland, and Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.
The Russian president, who’s going through arrest in over 100 nations after the Worldwide Felony Courtroom issued a warrant in opposition to him for battle crimes dedicated in Ukraine, hardly ever travels overseas.
He’s unlikely to be arrested throughout this journey, as neither the UAE nor Saudi Arabia is a member of the ICC.
Putin shouldn’t be in a foreign country for greater than a day, as he’s anticipated to be again in Moscow on Thursday, the place he’ll meet Iranian President Ebraïm Raïssi.
In the meantime, again at COP28, the Russian pavilion appeared far faraway from all this agitation.
A Russian-speaking panel was in progress on Wednesday morning, surrounded by screens boasting the deserves of nuclear vitality and Russia’s state-owned nuclear vitality firm, Rosatom.
Zack Colman contributed reporting from Dubai.