Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a rare trip abroad to discuss oil production, OPEC+ and the wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine.
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Putin's meeting with the prince, known as MbS, comes after oil prices fell despite a pledge by OPEC+, which groups the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies led by Russia, to further cut output.
Putin arrived in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday for talks with President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
He is due to then travel to Saudi Arabia for his first face-to-face meeting with MbS since October 2019.
The Kremlin said they would discuss energy co-operation, including as part of OPEC+, whose members pump more than 40 per cent of the world's oil.
"Close Russian-Saudi co-ordination in this format is a reliable guarantee of maintaining a stable and predictable situation in the global oil market," the Kremlin said.
The Kremlin chief's last visit to the region was in July 2022, when he met Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.
It was not immediately clear what Putin, who has rarely left Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, intends to discuss with the crown prince of the world's largest oil exporter, just days after disagreements delayed a key OPEC+ meeting.
They will also discuss the war between Israel and Hamas militants, the situation in Syria and Yemen, and broader issues like ensuring stability in the Gulf, the Kremlin said.
A Kremlin aide said Ukraine would also be discussed.
Putin will host Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Putin and MbS, who together control one-fifth of the oil pumped each day, have long enjoyed close relations, although both have at times been ostracised by the West.
At a G20 summit in 2018, just two month after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate, Putin and MbS high-fived and shook hands with smiles.
MbS, 38, has sought to reassert Saudi Arabia as a regional power with less deference to the United States, which supplies Riyadh with most of its weapons and is the world's top producer of oil.
Putin, who sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, says Russia is engaged in an existential battle with the West - and has courted allies across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia amid Western attempts to isolate Moscow.
Both MbS and Putin, 71, want and need high prices for oil - the lifeblood of their economies.
The question for both is how much of the burden each should take on to keep prices aloft - and how to verify the burden.
OPEC+ last month delayed its meeting by several days due to disagreements over production levels by some members.
Saudi's energy minister said OPEC+ also wanted more assurances from Moscow it would do good on its pledge to reduce fuel exports.
Relations between Saudi and Russia in OPEC+ have at times been uneasy and a deal on cuts almost broke down in March 2020, when the markets were already shaken by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the two nations managed to patch up their relations within weeks and OPEC+ agreed to record cuts of almost 10 per cent of global oil demand, to prop up the oil markets.
Since war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7, Putin has cast the conflict as a failure of US policy in the Middle East and has fostered ties with Arab allies and Iran, as well as with Hamas.
Australian Associated Press
