Russian President Vladimir Putin made a conspicuous effort on Tuesday to bring Saudi Arabia’s de facto chief executive, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), into the final stage of the Ukraine peace process as a major player.
Putin called MBS to “brief” him on the results of his meeting with President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday. According to Saudi state media, Putin effusively thanked the Saudi leader for hosting U.S. and Russian negotiators in March.
“The Crown Prince affirmed the kingdom’s continued support for diplomatic dialogue as a means of resolving international disputes,” Saudi media reported.
The March meeting in Riyadh, the first talks between senior American and Russian officials in three years, was seen as an important early step in the process that led to the Alaska summit — but in diplomatic terms, March was a long time ago, and the Saudis have not been big players in the process since then.
One of the major agreements ostensibly reached in Riyadh in March was that Russia and Ukraine would stop attacking each others’ energy infrastructure. That agreement did not hold up for very long.
Russia and Ukraine also agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea in March, a pact that has proven somewhat more durable than the agreement to stop bombing each others’ energy facilities.
Putin might want to keep MBS in the loop because the Saudi leader has good personal relations with both Putin and Trump. At the national level, Saudi Arabia is both a major ally of the United States and a partner in the OPEC+ cartel with Russia. The Saudis resisted efforts by the Biden administration to peel them away from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
The Saudis also seem to be credible mediators in the eyes of the Ukrainians. In September 2022, MBS brokered a major prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine. Some Russian officials were unhappy with the deal, but MBS managed to convince Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get on board.
Zelensky was critical of Saudi Arabia’s involvement at first. He postponed a trip to the kingdom in February 2025 because he was angry at the Saudis for hosting a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov without Zelensky’s involvement.
Zelensky later relented and flew to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with MBS, saying he was “determined to do everything to end this war with a just and lasting peace.”
Cynics said MBS got involved in the Russia-Ukraine process in a bid to regain international credibility after the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Turkey in October 2018. Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor cleared MBS of involvement with Khashoggi’s death, but detractors of the crown prince remain convinced he ordered or approved the killing.
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