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Business as usual as Iraq's foreign minister visits Moscow

In meetings this week, Russian and Iraqi officials discussed energy deals, Baghdad's battle with Iraqi Kurdistan and how those topics intersect.
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As Kurds and Iraqis struggled to resolve their differences this week, Baghdad and Moscow were doing the same, albeit with much less animosity.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari visited Moscow to discuss with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov how to develop economic ties and contain terror groups such as the Islamic State and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. But their focus during the Oct. 23-25 visit was the potential repercussions of last week's battle between forces of Iraq's central government and those of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

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