Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Khalid bin Salman, has rejected claims that the kingdom has sided with Russia in its war with Ukraine following OPEC’s decision to slash oil production by 2 million barrels a day.
Taking to Twitter on Oct. 16, the defense minister re-tweeted a
post from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dated Oct. 14 in which the leader thanked the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, for supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and voting to condemn Russia’s annexation of large swaths of the country.
Saudi Arabia
pledged $400 million in humanitarian aid for Ukraine on Saturday.
“We agreed to interact in the release of prisoners of war. We agreed on the provision of macro-financial aid to Ukraine,” Zelenskyy wrote following a phone call with the crown prince.
Alongside the re-tweet, Khalid bin Salman wrote that Saudi officials were “astonished” by accusations that it is siding with Russia, adding that “it is telling that these false accusations did not come from the Ukrainian government.”
“Although the OPEC+ decision, which was taken unanimously, was due to purely economic reasons, some accused the Kingdom of standing with Russia,” bin Salman wrote in a separate
post. “Iran is also a member of OPEC, does this mean that the Kingdom is standing with Iran as well?”
OPEC+ members
announced on Oct. 5 the unanimous decision to cut down oil production amid uncertainty surrounding global economic and oil market outlooks.
A number of OPEC+ member states have since released statements endorsing the steep cuts, including Iraq, the second-largest producer in OPEC, Oman, and Bahrain. They have said the cuts were decided in an effort to create market stability and avoid volatility.
‘Now Is Not the Time to Be Aligning With Russia’
However, the Biden administration, which has for months pursued failed attempts to lobby the Saudi kingdom to produce more oil, quickly condemned the group’s decision, claiming that it was “aligning with Russia.”Russia is a key member of OPEC.
“We believe by the decision that OPEC+ made last week, [Saudi Arabia is] certainly aligning themselves with Russia,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during an Oct. 11
press briefing when asked if the administration believes Saudi Arabia sides with Russia in the Ukraine conflict. “And right now, this is not the time to be aligning with Russia, especially with this brutal, unprecedented war that they started in Ukraine.”
Elsewhere, White House and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby accused Riyadh of pushing other countries into making the decision to cut oil production.
“The Saudi foreign ministry can try to spin or deflect, but the facts are simple. The world is rallying behind Ukraine in combating Russian aggression,” Kirby said in a
statement earlier this month.
Kirby added that some OPEC nations had privately communicated to U.S. officials that they were coerced into supporting Saudi Arabia’s decision but stopped short of naming which nations had allegedly made those statements.
In an interview with CNN on Oct. 12, President Joe Biden said that Washington must now “rethink” its relationship with Riyadh following the announced production cuts.
“I am in the process, when the House and Senate gets back, they’re going to have to—there’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” Biden said.
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