Russian President; Vladimir Putin took a trip out of the country. He held talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran on Tuesday.
This is the Kremlin leader’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
During his visit to Tehran, Putin will also hold his first face-to-face meeting since the invasion with a NATO leader, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, to discuss a deal that would resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports as well as peace in Syria.
Putin’s trip, which comes just days after US President Joe Biden visited Israel and Saudi Arabia, sends a strong message to the West about Moscow’s plans to forge closer strategic ties with Iran, China, and India in the face of Western sanctions.
Footage of Putin’s meeting with Khamenei showed the Russian leader and the Iranian president sitting together a few meters from the Supreme Leader, in a spartan white room. Only an Iranian flag and a portrait of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini could be seen in the background.
“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.”
For Iran, also chafing under Western economic sanctions and at loggerheads with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program and a range of other issues, Putin’s visit is timely.
Its clerical leaders are keen to strengthen strategic relations with Russia in the face of an emerging US-backed Gulf Arab-Israeli bloc that could tilt the Middle East balance of power further away from Iran.