Despite the Western sanctions, Russian oil companies boosted their gasoline exports by 37% between January and May compared to the same period in 2022, Russian daily Kommersant reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the data.

The Russian Energy Ministry last month asked oil companies to reduce their exports and raise supply on the domestic market, according to Kommersant's sources.

Saudi officials have snubbed US Secretary of State’s latest push for the Kingdom’s normalization of relations with the Israeli regime and his bid to win further concessions on oil prices and Riyadh’s recent resumption of ties with Syria and Iran during his high-profile visit to Saudi Arabia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday, discussing energy prices and other important issues, the Kremlin said. The phone call follows the prince’s meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

According to the Kremlin readout of the call, the two leaders paid particular attention to “measures to further build up trade and economic ties, the implementation of promising joint projects in the field of investment, transport logistics, and energy.” 

Saudi Arabia will reduce how much oil it sends to the global economy, taking a unilateral step to prop up the sagging price of crude after two previous cuts to supply by major producing countries in the OPEC+ alliance failed to push oil higher.

US Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, on 31 May, threw cold water on reports by Israeli media that allege Saudi Arabia is close to normalizing ties with Tel Aviv.

“There’s a lot of misreporting and a lot of hyperventilation in the press, a lot of excitable rumint, I would say, in the press, especially in the Israeli press. They’re just electric with the idea that Saudi Arabia might take that step,” Leaf told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Wednesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Thursday with China's deputy foreign minister and other top diplomats from the BRICS bloc of developing economies for discussions that included the group's possible expansion to include the major oil-producing nations of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Sanaa’s National Salvation Government (NSG) in Yemen accused the Saudi Arabian authorities of preventing Yemeni Muslims from performing their Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Al-Mayadeen reported on 31 May.

Fouad Naji, the Deputy Minister of Guidance and Hajj Affairs, said that “the Saudi regime has used the Hajj as a pressure tool throughout the years of aggression and blockade.”

The US and Saudi Arabia on Thursday announced a suspension of Sudan peace talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah, citing “repeated serious violations” of the short-term ceasefire agreement by Sudan’s warring parties.

British intelligence agencies are facing a new investigation over their alleged complicity in the torture of two Saudi men at CIA “black sites” prior to their detention at Guantanamo Bay.

In separate legal cases, the two men accuse British intelligence agencies of conspiring with US officials in a CIA-run “secret detention, torture and interrogation programme” in the aftermath of the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in the US in 2001.

The strengthening of ties between the BRICS bank and Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer, is undesirable for the West as it again signals another advancement in the de-dollarisation of the global economy. In the last week of May, Saudi Arabia held talks to join BRICS’ New Development Bank as its ninth member, a decision that is not only economic but also with political motive.