LONDON/DUBAI – Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Tehran on Tuesday for a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the first trip by the Kremlin chief outside the former Soviet Union since the invasion of Ukraine.
Putin casts the West’s attempt to cripple Russia’s economy with the most severe sanctions in recent history as a declaration of economic war and says Russia is turning away from the West to China, India and Iran.
Just three days after U.S. President Joe Biden finished a visit to Saudi Arabia, Russia’s paramount leader arrives in Tehran to hold his fifth meeting with Khamenei, Iran’s second supreme leader who came to power in 1989.
“The contact with Khamenei is very important,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, told reporters in Moscow. “A trusting dialogue 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 one by Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, and the two leaders will meet in Tehran to discuss a deal aimed at resuming Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports, and Erdogan’s threat to launch another operation in northern Syria which Moscow opposes.
In Syria, Russia and Iran prevailed in their support for President Bashar al-Assad against the West, which called repeatedly for him to be toppled since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.
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