Saudi Arabia will provide $400 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Saudi state news agency SPA said, adding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday.
The crown prince expressed the kingdom’s readiness to continue efforts of mediation and support everything that contributes to de-escalation, SPA added.
Earlier on Thursday Saudi Arabia pushed other OPEC+ nations into an output cut last week, the White House claimed, as part of an escalating war of words between the two countries.
“More than one” OPEC member disagreed with Saudi Arabia’s push to cut production and felt coerced into the vote, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He said he was not going to identify the members to let them speak for themselves.
The United States presented Saudi Arabia with an analysis showing there was no market basis to lower oil production before the OPEC+ decision to cut output, Kirby said in an earlier statement on Thursday, pushing against Riyadh’s claims the output cut was “purely economic.”
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The 13-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, which include Russia, lowered their production target by 2 million barrels per day last week, even though world supplies are considered tight. Of those cuts, experts expect an actual production cut of about half that level.
