DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan traveled to Russia on Thursday for his second visit to the country in less than a year, to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a sign of the ever-strengthening ties between the two states.
The trip, according to Emirati state media service WAM, is focused on the two countries’ “strategic partnership” and on “ways to enhance cooperation, particularly in the economic, trade, investment, energy, and other areas that serve joint development, in addition to regional and international issues of common interest.”
The UAE is a longtime close ally of the United States and a major military and intelligence partner. It is also Russia’s most important economic partner in the Middle East — and trade between the two has ballooned in recent years, particularly since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russia-UAE trade jumped by 68% year-on-year in 2022 to $9 billion, Russia’s trade ministry said in February.
Now, “the trade turnover between Russia and the UAE reached $11.5 billion,” the UAE leader said during talks with Putin on Thursday, according to Russian state media outlet Tass.
Bin Zayed told his Russian counterpart: “We would like this figure to be doubled both at the bilateral level and with Eurasian countries during the next five years,” adding that relations between the two countries “are developing at an accelerated pace.”
