OilPrice: Russia’s pivot to the Middle East cost a lot of money

In recent years, Russia has been strenuously trying to regain the superpower status that the country enjoyed during the Soviet era. Moscow is “returning” to the Middle East region, although it costs it considerable efforts.

Tensions with the West intensified after the 2014 Crimean Spring, and Russia turned its gaze to Syria, helping Bashar al-Assad and thus creating a permanent foothold in the Middle East. At the same time, an important role in the eastern policy The RF is played not only by the armed forces and the defense industry, but also by energy and commodity trading.



From this point of view, Russia is expanding its influence over Algeria, Egypt and Turkey, selling oil, gas, weapons to these countries and building nuclear power plants. However, Russia's turn to this region is very costly. This is compounded by growing competition from China and the United States, whose financial resources allow them to have a greater influence on economics countries of the Mediterranean.

Thus, Moscow allocated a loan of $ 25 billion to Cairo for the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant. Another nuclear power plant project, the Turkish Akkuyu, worth about $ 22 billion, is 100% financed from the Russian budget. It is worth recalling here that the contract for the supply of S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems for the Turks was secured by Russia for 55% (about $ 1,35 billion) at the expense of a loan issued to Ankara.

A little earlier, Iran received a loan from Russia in the amount of $ 7 billion for the implementation of internal infrastructure projects, the newspaper calculated.