Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he had arrived in Saudi Arabia to address an Arab League summit in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah.
Zelensky is expected to travel on 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. According to Reuters, Zelensky left Poland on a French government plane that will also take him to Hiroshima.
“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.
Zelensky 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.
“Crimea was the first to suffer Russian occupation and most of those facing repression in occupied Crimea are Muslims,” he said.
The summit comes at a time when Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is flexing its diplomatic muscle across the Middle East and beyond.
With AFP