Russia’s Policy towards the Middle East: The Case of Yemen

ABSTRACT

Yemen occupies a peripheral place in Russian foreign policy for three reasons: lack of serious economic interest, the illusory potential of strengthening the military presence there and recognition of Saudi Arabia’s role in the Yemeni conflict. However, a deepening of the split within the Arab coalition in Yemen, primarily between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has not only forced the Russian authorities to seek a balance between Yemeni actors, but also made Russia part of the so-called ‘Yemeni triangle’ alongside the two GCC countries. Russian involvement in the Yemeni crisis is constrained by its economic weakness and prioritisation of Russia-Gulf relations more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Yemeni crisis
• Russia
• foreign policy
• Gulf
• Middle East

Acknowledgments

This work was carried out within the framework of the Basic Research Program, National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2020, supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project # 18-18-00254).

Notes

¹ Messianism was an immanent component of the Soviet Communist ideology.

² Russia’s Syria policy is in fact primarily driven by Russia’s domestic agenda as well as by priorities in its relations with the West, Turkey and Israel.

³ We mean a conflict between Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen. The first echoes were heard in 2016 and were associated with different visions for resolving the Yemeni crisis as well as reliance on different internal Yemeni forces, which often came into military conflict with each other. Qatar withdrew from the Arab Coalition after the Qatar diplomatic crisis began in June 2017, and no longer pursues any active policy in Yemen, so Russia does not have to take Qatar’s position into account as regards its Yemeni agenda.

⁴ This factor does not apply in the same way to Syria, where Russian support for Damascus does not irritate Saudi Arabia as much as any comparable Russian support for Houthi Sanaa would. At present, the only realistic alternative to the regime on the ground in Syria are forces supported by Turkey and Qatar, but due to the ongoing struggle for regional hegemony between the Saudi and Qatari–Turkish coalitions (Vasiliev, Khayrullin and Korotayev 2019), Saudi Arabia and the UAE consider Qatari–Turkish control over Syria less desirable than Assad’s regime remaining in power.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leonid Issaev

Leonid Issaev is Vice-head of the Laboratory for Sociopolitical Destabilization Risks Monitoring, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, and Research Fellow at the Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. Email: [email protected]

Andrey Korotayev

Andrey Korotayev is Head of the Laboratory for Sociopolitical Destabilization Risks Monitoring, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, and Leading Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.