DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan traveled to Russia on Thursday for his second visit to the country in less than a year, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a sign of the ever-strengthening ties between the two states.

The trip, according to Emirati state media service WAM, was focused on the two countries' "strategic partnership" and on "ways to enhance cooperation, particularly in the economic, trade, investment, energy, and other areas that serve joint development, in addition to regional and international issues of common interest."

The UAE is a longtime close ally of the United States and a major military and intelligence partner. It is also Russia's most important economic partner in the Middle East — and trade b

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