Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Baghdad on Oct. 7. Since his last trip more than five years ago, the situation in Iraq and the region has changed dramatically. Lavrov also visited Erbil, the first time the top Russian diplomat has visited Iraqi Kurdistan.
The visit to Iraq took place during a period of unrest and hardships for the country’s population. Weeklong protests saw more than 100 killed and over 6,000 injured. The violence disrupted the foreign minister's visit as he had to cancel his stay in the capital. Nevertheless, Lavrov’s agenda, though cut down to one day, included meetings with all key figures of Iraq’s government: President Barham Salih, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbusi and Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hakim, who also co-chairs the Inter-Governmental Russian-Iraqi Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation from the Iraqi side.
Lavrov avoided mentioning the protests in his public statements, adhering to Moscow's principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its allies in the Middle East. The visit’s agenda emphasized trade and economic cooperation. Lavrov was accompanied by a delegation of entrepreneurs, among them Gazpromneft Director Alexander Dyukov, Soyuzneftegaz CEO Yuri Shafrannik, representatives of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation and officials from Russia’s oil giant Rosneft and Technopromexport, a Russian engineering company that builds energy facilities in Russia and abroad, including power plants, power lines and electricity substations. The Russian Foreign Ministry said no particular contracts were discussed and the negotiations were mostly dedicated to a “demonstration of intentions.”
Although the trade volume between the countries is hardly sufficient (it rose to $1.4 billion in 2017 but fell to around half that in 2018), Iraq is one of Russia’s key economic partners in the Middle East, mostly due to military-technical cooperation and energy contracts. Despite pressure from the United States, in 2014 Iraq ranked second as a global purchaser of Russian weapons with about 11% of all Russian arms exports. Nor did American influence hamper cooperation in the oil and gas trade.
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