Vladimir Putin delighted to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the Saudi royal arrives at G20
- The prince was no pariah as he shook hands and laughed with Putin less than two months after the murder of a dissident journalist
- The prince also chatted with US President Donald Trump, China’s President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron
World leaders including a beaming Vladimir Putin welcomed Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday at the G20 summit, showing he was no pariah less than two months after the murder of a dissident journalist by a Saudi hit team.
In an image that quickly went viral online, the Russian leader and the prince both beamed and clasped each other’s hands like long-lost friends.
The embrace came amid reports that Russia and Saudi Arabia have reached a pact to cut oil production when the OPEC cartel meets on December 6 in Vienna, to help shore up collapsing crude prices.
The ambitious 33-year-old prince was also seen chatting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka, and shaking hands with French President Emmanuel Macron, at the start of the two-day meeting of the world’s top economies in Buenos Aires.
The French presidency said that Macron spoke to the prince about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen, where millions are on the brink of starvation in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Macron told Prince Mohammed that Europeans wanted international investigators to take part in the probe on Khashoggi’s death and stressed “the necessity of a political solution in Yemen”, the Elysee Palace said.