Moscow's approach to the Middle East has undergone real changes from Soviet times to the present day: it evolved from creating zones of influence against the background of confrontation with the West to seeing the region through the prism of mainly economic interests, and, finally, to Moscow’s current pragmatic view.

With the Syrian crisis entering its fifth year, the changing security context in Syria and Iraq since the summer of 2014 has highlighted the increasingly important role played by the Kurds as a fighting force against Islamic State (IS). In a more general context of renewed Russian influence in the Middle East since the late 2000s, the development of Russo-Kurdish relations has entered a new phase since the beginning of the current decade.

A general economic model of understanding Middle Eastern states was elaborated by political scientists around the 1980’s, based on the concept of rent as a factor of wealth around which the economic model as much as the governance of energy-rich countries was re-organized. The particular case of GCC’s countries as rentier state has been at the cornerstone of this concept since they own the most important share of energy resources in the world.