Russia and UAE double down on trade, testing U.S. limits
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with United Arab Emirates’ President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan during a meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia, October 11, 2022.
Pavel Bednyakov | Sputnik | via Reuters
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, meeting 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, was 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,” Mohammed bin Zayed 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.”
Russia and the UAE signed a strategic partnership in 2018, and numerous visits between their leaders have been exchanged since then.
Abu Dhabi has not officially taken a side on the Russia-Ukraine war, instead calling for peace and an end to the fighting. It has also refused to partake in Western sanctions against Russia, providing a safe haven for Russian oligarchs and expatriates fleeing both sanctions and mandatory conscription.
Some 4,000 Russian businesses operate in the UAE, according to reports, and foreign direct investment between the two has steadily increased.
This pool photograph distributed by Russian state agency Sputnik shows Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan attending a welcoming ceremony ahead of their talks in Abu Dhabi on December 6, 2023.
Sergei Savostyanov | Afp | Getty Images
The visit by the UAE leader to Moscow “says the UAE values its strategic partnership with Russian and will to continue to deepen ties with Russia,” Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute focused on Russia’s policy toward the Middle East, told CNBC.
“As before, the UAE wants to continue to maintain a diversified foreign policy overall between Russia, the United States, and China, rather than choose only one.”
The UAE leader’s visit also comes as the White House announced an upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin to discuss Ukraine war ceasefire efforts — and in the wake of Trump announcing punitive tariffs on India for importing Russian oil, which the American leader says is “fuelling the war machine.”
For Russia, the ongoing relationship with the UAE is a win and is also “clearly a sign that they are not nearly as isolated as the West would like them to be both diplomatically and economically,” said Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at Rane.
“The UAE is also a key part of Russia’s efforts to bypass Western sanctions. For [UAE leader] MBZ on a political front, this is a demonstration that he is independent of Washington, despite relying on American forces for security,” Bohl said, referring to Mohammed bin Zayed by his initials.
UAE ‘helps fuel Russia’s war’
The U.S. has in the past expressed frustration with the UAE’s enabling of Russian imports.
In 2023, the Biden administration called the UAE a “country of focus” for circumventing sanctions and export controls on Russia. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, companies in the UAE during the second half of 2022 transported more than $5 million of export-controlled goods from the U.S. to Russia — including semiconductors that can power weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield.
“The UAE helps facilitate dual-use trade. It is an important transit hub for dual-use goods, meaning goods that can have both civilian and military use, so this trade helps fuel Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Borshchevskaya said.
The UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
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