AFP

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has long been sidelined on the world stage but as he prepares to mark five years as de facto leader, he is finally coming in from the cold.

Next month’s visit by US President Joe Biden will complete the international rehabilitation of the 36-year-old prince, who was widely reviled over the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Biden’s trip — after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices soaring, piling on economic pain — follows visits by the leaders of France, Britain and Turkey.

It represents an unqualified victory for Prince Mohammed, who has led his country on a rollercoaster ride since being named the heir of his father King Salman, 86, on June 21, 2017.

And in a further sign of ties on the mend, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that the crown prince would travel there next week on his first visit since the Khashoggi killing.

In his time as unofficial ruler of Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and the home of Islam’s two holiest sites, “MBS” has liberalised many aspects of daily life while asserting stern control over others.

Yet his drive to transform the conservative kingdom risked being completely overshadowed by Khashoggi’s murder, an act so abhorrent that Biden’s trip — a routine move for past American leaders — has sparked controversy.

Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi, an insider turned critic, in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018.

US intelligence concluded that Prince Mohammed “approved” an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, a charge he denies.

Following the visits by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Turkey’s Erdogan, the planned meeting with Biden is a major validation of Prince Mohammed.

“Washington was kind of the hub of opposition to MBS when it comes to official public statements and mobilisation in the West,” said Yasmine Farouk of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“This is exactly what MBS was aiming to get through the last year-and-a-half: a meeting and a picture with Biden as a counterpart,” said one Riyadh-based diplomat.

– Women at the wheel –

When he arrives, Biden will find Prince Mohammed’s stamp almost everywhere. But no group has been affected more than Saudi women.

The axing of notorious rules concerning what women can wear and where they can go is a centrepiece of the new Saudi liberalisation narrative.

Abaya robes and hijab headscarves are now optional, women are no longer banned from concerts and sporting events, and in 2018 they gained the right to drive.

The kingdom has also eased so-called guardianship rules, meaning women can now obtain passports and travel abroad without a male relative’s permission.

Yet the story for women has not been entirely positive, especially for those who dare to speak out.

In 2018, authorities arrested at least a dozen women activists, most of them right before the ban on female motorists was lifted.

The move was preceded by a clampdown that hit princes and senior officials suspected of graft or disloyalty, dozens of whom were rounded up in November 2017 in Riyadh’s luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Prince Mohammed “has coupled his dramatic and thoroughgoing cultural, social and artistic revolution from the top down… with an equally dramatic concentration of power politically”, said Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

– Next phase ‘critical’ –

Some of Prince Mohammed’s most striking policies have played out beyond his country’s borders.

Two months after his father, King Salman, ascended the throne in 2015 and named Prince Mohammed defence minister, Riyadh rallied a coalition to intervene in war-hit Yemen.

The conflict between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and Iran-aligned Huthi rebels has gone on to kill hundreds of thousands of people directly and indirectly and drive millions to the brink of famine.

Recently, the kingdom has adopted what analysts call a somewhat conciliatory approach in the region, for example by engaging in talks with rival Iran. Prince Mohammed has also referred to Israel as a “potential ally”.

Perhaps the most significant element of Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 reform agenda is his bid to remake an economy long dependent on oil.

The crown prince now owns Saudi Arabia’s reform process and his legacy will hinge on its success, said Kristian Ulrichsen of Rice University’s Baker Institute in the United States.

“Having made so much of the fact that he, and only he, can transform Saudi Arabia by 2030, the next several years will be critical for Mohammed bin Salman as he seeks to deliver tangible results.”

Europe sent a powerful symbol of solidarity with Ukraine on Friday, when Brussels backed Kyiv’s bid for EU candidate status, even as Russia shelled frontline Ukrainian cities and cut back gas supplies to the West.

With the European Commission’s backing, Ukraine could now be added to the list of countries vying for EU membership as early as next week, when member state leaders meet at their Brussels summit. 

All 27 EU leaders will have to agree to the candidacy, but the heads of the European Union’s biggest members — France, Germany and Italy — already gave their full-throated support to the idea on Thursday, on a trip to a war-torn suburb of Kyiv.

Then on Friday, the European Commission gave the executive’s formal backing to the bid, and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen made her position clear by donning a striking jacket in Ukraine’s national colours.

“We all know that Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us for the European dream,” she said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately welcomed the decision as a “first step on the EU membership path that’ll certainly bring our victory closer”.

He thanked von der Leyen for the commission’s “historic decision” and said he expected that EU leaders would give Ukraine a “positive result” at the June 23-24 summit.

As Brussels celebrated their breakthrough, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — whose country has left the European Union — returned to Kyiv for his second visit since Russia’s February 24 invasion. 

“Many days of this war have proved that Great Britain’s support for Ukraine is firm and resolute,” Zelensky wrote on social media. Johnson’s office tweeted a picture of the premier meeting the Ukrainian leader, carrying a stack of books and paperwork under one arm.

“My visit today, in the depths of this war, is to send a clear and simple message to the Ukrainian people: the UK is with you, and we will be with you until you ultimately prevail,” Johnson said.

According to Downing Street, Johnson offered to launch a major training operation for Ukrainian forces, to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days and “change the equation of the war”.

Each Ukrainian soldier would spend three weeks on the British training course, learning combat tactics, basic medical skills, cyber-security and counter explosive tactics.

Russia responded to Brussels’ decision with scorn, accusing the West of “manipulating” Ukraine with promises of integration. 

– Russian bombardment –

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine “is not getting a bright future, for some reason, despite the promises becoming more and more sweet and alluring”.

Once Ukraine joins the EU candidates’ list — alongside several countries in the western Balkans — it could still take years to meet all the formal membership requirements, even if Kyiv prevails in the war.

“Yes, Ukraine should be welcomed as a candidate country — this is based on the understanding that good work has been done but important work also remains to be done,” von der Leyen said.

And in the meantime, the fighting continues, with Russian forces bombarding Ukrainian pockets of resistance in frontline Severodonetsk, including civilians holed up in a chemical plant in the eastern Ukrainian city.

And Moscow turned up the pressure on Western allies, sharply reducing flows of natural gas in its pipelines to Western Europe, driving up energy prices.

France’s network provider said it had not received any Russian gas by pipeline from Germany since June 15, and Italy’s Eni said it expected Russian firm Gazprom to cut its supplies by half on Friday.

Several European countries, including Italy and Germany, are highly reliant upon Russian gas for their energy needs and, as the West sides with Ukraine, Moscow is cutting supplies.

– ‘Extremely alarming’ –

Berlin and Rome have rejected Russia’s argument that technical issues have caused the drop in supplies, arguing that state-owned Gazprom’s move is political.

But western Europe is sweltering in a heatwave and energy prices are already soaring, adding to runaway inflation and industrial action in several economies.

The situation is, of course, starker in Ukraine itself, where Russian troops have occupied a swathe of the south and east of the country during the 113-day war, including much of the Donbas region.

“The humanitarian situation across Ukraine — particularly in the eastern Donbas — is extremely alarming and continues to deteriorate rapidly,” the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, said.

The statement said the situation is “particularly worrying in and around Severodonetsk” — where bloody battles have raged for weeks. 

Severodonetsk is in the Lugansk region, where governor Sergiy Gaiday called for a ceasefire, stating hundreds of civilians were trapped in the besieged Azot chemical plant in the city.  

“It is now impossible and physically dangerous to get out of the plant due to constant shelling and fighting. There are 568 people in the shelter, including 38 children,” he said.

– ‘God’s will’ –

Gaiday said earlier this week that around 10,000 civilians remained in the city, which is controlled mostly by Russian forces.

In the frontline Donbas village of Adamivka near the city of Sloviansk, a community of Orthodox nuns have seen a rocket hole blasted into the wall of their well-tended garden.

Under near-constant bombardment by Russian forces, Sister Anastasi and a group of other black-clad nuns and pilgrims live day-to-day, praying for deliverance.

“We are all alive, yes. No one has left. This is our home,” she said quietly, her face framed by a black veil, as shells crashed in the distance.

“We trust in God’s will, in God’s help, in the help of all the saints and the Holy Virgin. This is our home, we have nowhere else to go.” 

At least two people were killed and 20 injured in a Russian strike on a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the local governor said.

Separately, Zelensky announced an end to the visa-free travel that Russian citizens, many of whom have Ukrainian relatives, have enjoyed since Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.

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US President Joe Biden told a climate conference for major economies Friday that Russia’s war in Ukraine shows the shift to renewable energy is a matter of national security as well as key to preventing global warming.

“Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault on its neighbor Ukraine has fueled a global energy crisis and sharpened the need to achieve longterm reliable energy security and security,” Biden told the virtual summit hosted from the White House. “The good news is that climate security and energy security go hand in hand.”

This was Biden’s third convening of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate since he took office in 2021 with a vow to make the United States a leader in the world’s attempt to halt catastrophic global warming.

But it comes just as Biden faces public anger over soaring fuel prices linked to fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, European countries are struggling to find ways to circumvent dependence on Russian oil and gas imports.

In his speech, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered a blistering attack on the oil and gas industry, accusing it of mirroring tobacco companies’ tactics to push a “false narrative to minimize their responsibility for climate change.”

“Nothing could be more clear or present than the danger of fossil fuel expansion. Even in the short-term, fossil fuels don’t make political or economic sense. Yet we seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat,” he said.

However, the UN chief’s message ran counter to the political realities facing Biden as he tries to persuade the domestic oil industry to amp up production and prepares for a visit to Saudi Arabia next month.

Americans are currently paying an average of $5 a gallon to fill their cars, up from $3 a year ago, and the hike is in turn fueling wider inflation, now at a 40-year high.

– India, Russia absent –

A senior Biden administration official said 23 countries were represented at the video conference, representing most of the world’s major economies and “focused around the mitigation that they will be taking” on climate impacts.

At a previous session in September 2021, Biden and the European Union announced a pledge to cut emissions of methane, a planet-warming gas. This was formally launched at the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow and now has 115 countries signed on.

Friday’s gathering was the largest leader-level gathering before COP27, the follow-up summit, set to take place in Egypt this November.

But highlighting diplomatic complications besetting the search for international cooperation on the global climate threat, Russia did not attend Friday’s summit.

China was represented only at the level of its climate envoy, rather than President Xi Jinping, the White House said. And India was not on the official list of attendees, either.

– Methane opportunity –

Warning that the world must not let global climate change mitigation goals “slip out of our reach,” Biden said “the window for action is rapidly narrowing.”

Despite the scramble to adapt global energy markets to fallout from the Ukraine war, Biden insisted that longterm climate management, immediate economic goals and ending reliance on energy exporter Russia can all work together.

He cited the global pledge to end methane gas leaks and the practice of burning off, or flaring, unwanted gas at oil fields, calling on countries to “ramp up” their responses.

European economies are heavily reliant on Russian energy, but Biden said an end to methane waste alone could solve that problem.

“Each year our existing energy system leaks enough methane to meet the needs for the entire European power sector. We flare enough gas to offset nearly all of the EU’s gas imports from Russia,” he said.

“So by stopping the leaking and flaring of this super-potent greenhouse gas and capturing this resource for countries that need it we’re addressing two problems at once.”

Europe sent a powerful symbol of solidarity with Ukraine on Friday, when Brussels backed Kyiv’s bid for EU candidate status, even as Russia shelled frontline Ukrainian cities and cut back gas supplies to the West.

With the European Commission’s backing, Ukraine could now be added to the list of countries vying for EU membership as early as next week, when member state leaders meet at their Brussels summit. 

All 27 EU leaders will have to agree to the candidacy, but the heads of the European Union’s biggest members — France, Germany and Italy — already gave their full-throated support to the idea on Thursday, on a trip to a war-torn suburb of Kyiv.

Then on Friday, the European Commission gave the executive’s formal backing to the bid, and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen made her position clear by donning a striking jacket in Ukraine’s national colours.

“We all know that Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us for the European dream,” she said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately welcomed the decision as a “first step on the EU membership path that’ll certainly bring our victory closer”.

He thanked von der Leyen for the commission’s “historic decision” and said he expected that EU leaders would give Ukraine a “positive result” at the June 23 to 24 summit.

Russia responded to Brussels’ decision with scorn, accusing the West of “manipulating” Ukraine with promises of integration. 

– Russian bombardment –

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine “is not getting a bright future, for some reason, despite the promises becoming more and more sweet and alluring”.

Once Ukraine joins the EU candidates’ list — alongside several countries in the western Balkans — it could still take years to meet all the formal membership requirements, even if Kyiv prevails in the war.

“Yes, Ukraine should be welcomed as a candidate country — this is based on the understanding that good work has been done but important work also remains to be done,” von der Leyen said.

And in the meantime, the fighting continues, with Russian forces bombarding Ukrainian pockets of resistance in frontline Severodonetsk, including civilians holed up in a chemical plant in the eastern Ukrainian city.

And Moscow turned up the pressure on the Western allies, sharply reducing flows of natural gas in its pipelines to Western Europe, driving up energy prices.

France’s network provider said it had not received any Russian gas by pipeline from Germany since June 15, and Italy’s Eni said it expected Russian firm Gazprom to cut its supplies by half on Friday.

Several European countries, including Italy and Germany, are highly reliant upon Russian gas for their energy needs and, as the West sides with Ukraine, Moscow is cutting supplies.

– ‘Extremely alarming’ –

Berlin and Rome have rejected Russia’s argument that technical issues have caused the drop in supplies, arguing that state-owned Gazprom’s move is political.

But western Europe is sweltering in a heatwave and energy prices are already soaring, adding to runaway inflation and industrial action in several economies.

The situation is, of course, starker in Ukraine itself, where Russian troops have occupied a swathe of the south and east of the country during the 113-day war, including much of the Donbas region.

“The humanitarian situation across Ukraine — particularly in the eastern Donbas — is extremely alarming and continues to deteriorate rapidly,” the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, said.

The statement said the situation is “particularly worrying in and around Severodonetsk” — where bloody battles have raged for weeks. 

Severodonetsk is in the Lugansk region, where governor Sergiy Gaiday called for a ceasefire, stating hundreds of civilians were trapped in the besieged Azot chemical plant in the city.  

“It is now impossible and physically dangerous to get out of the plant due to constant shelling and fighting. There are 568 people in the shelter, including 38 children,” he said.

– ‘God’s will’ –

Gaiday said earlier this week that around 10,000 civilians remained in the city, which is controlled mostly by Russian forces.

In the frontline Donbas village of Adamivka near the city of Sloviansk, a community of Orthodox nuns have seen a rocket hole blasted into the wall of their well-tended garden.

Under near-constant bombardment by Russian forces, Sister Anastasi and a group of other black-clad nuns and pilgrims live day-to-day, praying for deliverance.

“We are all alive, yes. No one has left. This is our home,” she said quietly, her face framed by a black veil, as shells crashed in the distance.

“We trust in God’s will, in God’s help, in the help of all the saints and the Holy Virgin. This is our home, we have nowhere else to go.” 

At least two people were killed and 20 injured in a Russian strike on a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the local governor said.

Separately, Zelensky announced an end to the visa-free travel that Russian citizens, many of whom have Ukrainian relatives, have enjoyed since Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.

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