Posted on 05/19/23
| News Source: i24
'Kingdom of Saudi Arabia plays a significant role and we are ready to take our cooperation to a new level,' the Ukrainian leader says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he arrived in Saudi Arabia to address an Arab League summit in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah.
Zelensky was also expected to travel to Japan for a G7 meeting, on his first visits to the Middle East and Asia since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
"Arrived in Saudi Arabia. I will speak at the Arab League summit. I will meet with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman al-Saud and hold other bilateral talks," Zelensky said on social media.
The Ukrainian leader said his priorities for the visit would be "the presentation of our peace formula whose implementation should involve as many states as possible." "Another priority is the protection of Ukraine's Muslim community" in the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, he wrote.
At a time when Russia's war in Ukraine has roiled global energy markets, the role the Saudi kingdom plays as the world's largest oil exporter has grown in importance to both Washington and Moscow.
"Kingdom of Saudi Arabia plays a significant role and we are ready to take our cooperation to a new level," Zelensky tweeted shortly after arrival.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has mediated in the Russia-Ukraine conflict before.
Another leader welcomed into the fold was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose return to the summit marks a sea change in regional politics; the bloc suspended Syria in 2011 over the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators that led to civil war, yet the ban was lifted recently.