On his first foreign trip since Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin, who had recently compared himself to Peter the Great, held court among his closest allies in Central Asia and insisted the war went according to plan.
His second trip, announced Tuesday by the Kremlin, will take him into much more difficult diplomatic territory: next week meetings in Tehran with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, two nations that are sometimes aligned and sometimes sharply at odds with Russia and each other.
The meetings, if they go well for Mr Putin, represent an opportunity to strengthen military and economic support to counter the West’s military aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
While high fuel prices have boosted Russia’s revenues and the country has been encouraged by gradual military gains in Ukraine, Western sanctions have damaged its economy and limited its ability to build or buy technology for military use.
According to the White House, Russia looking for hundreds of drones from Iran, including those that can fire missiles, and analysts say Iran could provide Russia with a crucial trade route and expertise in circumventing sanctions and exporting oil.
The Russian military has taken control of much of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, at a terrible cost in destruction and casualties on both sides. It has temporarily halted its advance as it attempted to regroup battered units, but continues to shell Ukrainian targets with grenades, rockets and missiles.
Next week, in Tehran, the Iranian capital, Mr Putin will meet jointly and separately with President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov told reporters on Tuesday. Peskov said the leaders would discuss peace talks over Syria, a decade-old conflict in which Iran and Russia have supported the government and Turkey has supported an opposing rebel group.
Syria is just one sticking point between Iran and Turkey, each of which could help Mr Putin evade Western measures or drive wedges between the countries that banded together to support Ukraine. Mr Putin’s diplomatic push this week will also aim to counter the efforts of President Biden as he travels to the Middle East to meet with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Understanding the war between Russia and Ukraine better
mr. Erdogan has proven for years a prickly ally for NATO, which sometimes collaborates with other member states, but often pursues its own agenda, even if it disrupts the Western consensus. He has grown closer to Mr Putin in recent years, and briefly objected to Sweden and Finland joining NATO on the pursuit of autonomy by ethnic Kurds in Turkey and neighboring countries.
But Turkey, which shares the Black Sea coast with both Russia and Ukraine, has emerged as possibly the most active mediator between Mr Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. At the beginning of the war, Mr Erdogan organized meetings between delegations from each country, and since those negotiations stalled, he has held talks about lifting a Russian blockade to get Ukraine’s grain exports to world markets, where they can alleviate a food crisis†
Iran and Russia have long had cordial relations and often had a common interest in confronting the West. At the same time, Moscow tried to maintain relations with Iran’s regional enemies, Israel and some Arab countries.
But that balance shifted this year, as pressure from Western sanctions against Russia and tensions related to the war and oilties with Tehran appear to have made Moscow a higher priority and the two have grown closer.
Mr Putin met Iranian president Mr Raisi on the sidelines of a regional summit in Turkmenistan last month and spoke to him on the phone in early June, according to the Kremlin.
“Our relationship is of a really deep, strategic nature,” Mr Putin told Turkmenistan’s Mr Raisi, noting that trade between the two countries increased by 81 percent last year.
At a summit in Uzbekistan in September, Iran is expected to join a multilateral security group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which already includes Russia and China.
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, last month praised Iran’s accession as a move that would strengthen the organization “as one of the main centers of the emerging multipolar world order”, thereby diminishing the United States’ global influence.
But despite their common cause, relations between Russia and Iran could be strained by simple competition for the oil sales that dominate the economies of both countries.
Long ally of the Kremlin, Iran and Venezuela have long operated under strict Western sanctions, making them heavily dependent on oil sales to Asia, especially China. Now sanctions are pushing Russia into the same markets, fighting for sales to Asia. Analysts say competition has already forced Iran and Venezuela to cut their crude oil sharply to retain buyers.
The Kremlin may see the talks in Tehran as an opportunity to smoothen relations, especially if it wants help evading the kind of sanctions Iran has been dealing with for years. Iranian officials have openly called themselves experts in dealing with economic sanctions imposed by the United States, and could share their strategies with Russia.
“Iranians have a lot of experience and channels that they have used to circumvent sanctions, and they can provide corridors for Russian goods to travel through Iran to other places,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “This is all beneficial for Russia.”
Western officials say it is not clear to what extent Iran is supporting the Russian military campaign, but Putin may also be looking for specialized technology to aid his armed forces. While Russia has an overwhelming advantage in artillery and ammunition – it uses them with devastating effect on both military and civilian targets – it has struggled with reconnaissance that would allow for more precise strikes.
Espionage and combat drones can help make up for that shortfall. Advanced Drones Provided by Turkey were pivotal to Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia in their 2020 war.
Ukrainian officials say advanced rocket launchers called HIMARS and supplied by the United States have enabled Ukraine to hit Russian munitions depots and command posts far beyond the front lines with great precision.
For example, Ukrainian troops fighting to retake territory Monday night said they blew up a Russian munitions depot in the southern region of Kherson. Officials loyal to Moscow said one of the HIMARS carried out the strike and it hit a warehouse containing saltpetre, causing a large explosion. Neither claim could be verified on Tuesday.
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said US officials were not aware of whether Iran had already sent drones to Russia. Sullivan said Russia’s months of bombing had depleted its stock of precision-guided weapons, and seemed to suggest the Kremlin would run short or run out of armed surveillance drones or unmanned aerial vehicles.
“Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with several hundred UAVs, including those with weapons, on an accelerated timeline,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House.
He added that the United States had information that indicated that Iran was preparing to train Russian troops to use the drones this month.
Commenting on those comments, Nasser Kanani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that Iran-Russia cooperation “in the field of new technology predates the war in Ukraine.” He added: “There has been no specific development at this time.”
Alan Yuhas† Eric Schmitt† Euan Ward† Farnaz Fassihi† Anatoly Kurmanaev† Dan Bilefsky and Ivan Nechepurenko reporting contributed.