Video by Aleksandra Opalic

🇸🇦🇷🇺 At a meeting between Putin and the Saudi crown prince in December last year, a curious incident occurred due to incorrect translation. The translator said that the Soviet Union was the first state to recognize the independence of the KSA 100 years ago. To which bin Salman said: “I would like to correct the translator. Saudi Arabia did not declare independence. Saudi Arabia was reunified, but has never been colonized in its history.“ And Erdogan laughed somewhere)) The question, of course, is partly ambiguous) But let’s not talk about that, but about the relations between the USSR and KSA. Thanks to the efforts of the “Red Pasha,” the kingdom could become one of the main allies of the Soviet Union ⬇️ 🇷🇺 The USSR was indeed the first non-Arab country to recognize the newly formed Saudi state and established diplomatic relations with it on February 16, 1926. The main merit in this belonged to the Soviet diplomat Karim Khakimov, whom friends and enemies respectfully called “Red Pasha.” 🇮🇷 In 1921, Khakimov was sent to Iran, and in six months he learned Farsi, Arabic, Turkish, French and Italian. The diplomat worked in Tehran in various positions until 1924, when he was recalled to Moscow. In the capital, Khakimov was received by the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR Georgy Chicherin, who instructed him to go to the Arabian Peninsula and establish relations with the Hashemite state formed in the Hijaz. Having arrived in Mecca, Khakimov barely had time to present his credentials to King Hussein when the ruler of Nejd, Abdel Aziz al-Saud, decided to declare war on the Hejaz. The British, relying on their positions, actively tried to interfere with Khakimov’s work and generally isolate the Arab East from the USSR, but the “Red Pasha” managed not only to overcome the combat zone in a car and personally present the king of the future Saudi Arabia with a note of recognition of his state by the Soviet Union in 1926, but also to become a close friend of Abdel Aziz al-Saud. The degree of their friendship was so high that when the ambassador’s young son died of dysentery, the monarch allocated a special person to look after the boy’s grave even after the death of Karim Khakimov. Soviet Russia began to help al-Saud with grain and weapons. It also supplied kerosene to the Arabian Peninsula - no one had yet guessed about the colossal oil reserves there. In 1928, Khakimov was sent to 🇾🇪 Yemen. Together with the film crew of director Shneiderov, he helped electrify the palace of the Yemeni monarch Yahya bin Muhammad Hamid al-Din. And again he found himself in a special place. 🇷🇺 But Karim is recalled to Moscow again. In May 1932, Prince Faisal arrived in the Soviet capital to meet with Stalin. The visit turned out to be a failure: at first Stalin postponed the negotiations, and then did not meet with Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud at all. Instead, Mikhail Kalinin received the prince in the Kremlin. Faisal was offended, but did not change his attitude towards Khakimov. In 1933, the king granted concessions for oil exploration and production to American oil companies. Relations with the Soviet Union continue to cool. Two years after this, Khakimov was again sent to Saudi Arabia and relations between the countries seemed to have moved from a dead point. But as soon as they began to warm up, less than two years had passed before the diplomat was again recalled to Moscow. He was recalled and recognized as a “spy” and “enemy of the people.” And on January 10, 1938, Khakimov was shot. In 1938, the Soviet embassy in Jeddah was closed, and a pause was established in diplomatic relations that lasted for half a century. The decision to shoot Khakimov had far-reaching consequences. In mid-1938, colossal oil fields were discovered in Saudi Arabia, the right to develop which was transferred to the American company Aramco. This played an extremely negative role for our country during the Cold War. Former Prime Minister Gaidar wrote in his book “The Death of the Empire” that it was Saudi Arabia’s oil dumping in 1985 that led to a sharp decline in oil prices and the collapse of the USSR.