And there are also ongoing efforts by Russian oil company, Lukoil, to increase its holdings in southern Iraq. Lukoil already owns a major stake in one big oil field there, West Qurna 2, and it may take over the stake that Western multi-national, Exxon Mobil, wants to give up in another major oil field there, West Qurna 1.
And as has been pointed out before arms deals are not the beginning of any good diplomatic relationship; these kinds of things occur as a result of a good diplomatic relationship.
“Russia has been increasingly active in the Middle East in recent years, and further involvement in Iraq will generally be well received by the Arabs, who have traditionally viewed Moscow as a counterweight to the US,” concluded Marat Terterov, the founder of the Brussels-based European Geopolitical Forum, in an online interview on the website, World Politics Review, in June 2011. “Moscow's involvement in Iraq is broadly consistent with Russian foreign policy objectives in the past five to eight years,” Terterov argued. “These have focused on extending Russian national interests in various regions of the world - including former allied countries - and lobbying for an expansion of Russian commercial opportunities in those regions.”
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