Immediately after his working visit to the UAE, Vladimir Putin went to Saudi Arabia, where he is scheduled to meet with the Crown Prince and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. Despite the fact that the journalists of the Kremlin pool were ready to comply with the strictest dress code (for men this is a strict dark suit with long sleeves, for women — a dark dress that hides all parts of the body and a scarf on the head), it became known a couple of hours before the flight, that almost none of the journalists will be able to get outside the airport. Four television cameras and two photographers from the Russian Federation were allowed into the royal palace AL-YAMAMAH, the official residence of the King of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, although the Kremlin press service provided lists of the entire journalistic delegation that arrived in the country. The rest had to spend the entire visit at the airport.
As the AP press service said, at first the host party promised to allocate a basement room for journalists to work in the palace, where there is no telephone reception and no broadcast, but then referred to that that the palace is too small. In addition, a few hours before the start of the meeting, it turned out that there were no speakers, sound or microphones in the palace.
The mayor of Riyadh was waiting for Vladimir Putin at the airport, and the Crown Prince met the Russian delegation on the porch of the palace.
This is the first meeting between the Russian president and the head of KSA this year; they last met in Riyadh in 2019. However, in 2023 they have already spoken on the phone 5 times.
During the working meeting, it is planned to discuss issues of further development of bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic sphere. Trade turnover between Russia and Saudi Arabia in January-September of this year. increased by 4.8% and amounted to $1.35 billion, focusing on cooperation in agriculture, energy (including nuclear), industry, investment and space. It is especially noted that close Russian-Saudi coordination is a reliable guarantee of maintaining a stable and predictable situation in the global oil market. There are also plans to discuss the prospects for implementing the large-scale infrastructure project of the International Transport Corridor «North-South».