The Kremlin said on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin's high-five handshake with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the weekend was “based on an interest in further development of bilateral relations.”
The two world leaders met for a lengthy bilateral meeting during the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires on Dec. 1 to discuss oil output production cuts, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying by the RBC news website on Monday. The Russian president reportedly accepted an invitation to visit Saudi Arabia in 2019 during the meeting.
Peskov went on to call Putin’s rapport with the Saudi leader “an investment into effective relations on a mutually beneficial basis.”
Late last month, the Kremlin said it had no reason to believe that bin Salman had been involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi despite media reports.
