Andrii Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, announced on Sunday that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will provide $400 million in aid to Ukraine, including $300 million in oil products plus $100 million in humanitarian assistance.
Yermak said Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud signed documents pledging the aid during his visit to Kyiv over the weekend. It was the first visit paid to Ukraine by a Saudi foreign minister since the two countries established formal diplomatic relations in 1993.
Yermak additionally thanked Saudi Arabia for supporting Thursday’s non-binding United Nations resolution calling for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab states have not publicly denounced the Russian invasion, but most of them voted in favor of the U.N. resolution last week.
Yermak said Ukraine and Saudi Arabia have some “common challenges,” especially Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which Iran has supplied to both Yemeni insurgents who “carried out attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia” and “Russian terrorists carrying out attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.”
President Zelensky met with Prince Faisal on Sunday to discuss continued Saudi support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Saudi participation in U.N. peace negotiations, and a partnership to supply Ukrainian grain to African nations experiencing a food crisis.
Ukraine launched an initiative in November to ensure continuing supplies of grain to Africa, by using a Black Sea corridor opened by Russia exclusively for food shipments. Zelensky said at the time that this “Grain from Ukraine” program would demonstrate his country’s commitment to remaining a “responsible global citizen” despite the hardships imposed by the Russian invasion.
The Saudi government expressed concerns last spring that the Russian attack could “cause a lot of issues” for the “very, very, very vulnerable” nations of the Middle East and North Africa, which are heavily reliant on food imports.
“We welcome the minister with special hospitality and show our utmost commitment to the development of our relations. We will also jointly look for ways to strengthen our positions in the Global South, primarily in Africa, and will hold talks on this matter at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Sunday after meeting with the visiting Saudi foreign minister.
“We see interaction with Saudi Arabia not only at the bilateral level, not only at the multilateral level in the context of the U.N. and other international organizations, but also at the regional level, and we will coordinate our efforts,” Kuleba said.
As Al Jazeera News noted in October, the Saudis and their Arab allies are generally unwilling to “burn bridges with Moscow” by individually denouncing the invasion or imposing sanctions on Russia, but they are willing to join U.N. resolutions calling for peace and provide non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainians.
The Saudis apparently relished the opportunity to use the war to slap down United States President Joe Biden, who denounced Saudi de-facto chief executive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a human rights “pariah” during his 2020 presidential campaign. Saudi Arabia retains a strong oil partnership with Russia, and very strong economic ties with Russia’s senior partner in the emerging world order of authoritarianism, China.