Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed his Russian counterpart, saying their ties were “conductive to peace.” Putin’s second trip to China in six months is expected to focus on military and financial assistance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Thursday for his first trip abroad since reelection.
The two-day trip is the Russian leader’s second to China in six months.
Increasingly isolated from its former Western trade partners more than two years after launching a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Putin is searching for military and financial support from his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, as the war and related sanctions drag on with no end in sight.
Putin was welcomed by Chinese officials as well as a military honor guard when he touched down, before he was greeted by Xi at a grand welcoming ceremony outside central Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
What did Putin and Xi say?
Both Russian and Chinese state media covered the arrival, carrying remarks by two leaders in which they hailed their relations.
“Relations between Russia and China are not opportunistic and not directed against anyone,” Putin said later in the day, adding: “Our cooperation in international matters is one of the stabilizing factors in the international arena.”
Xi then told Putin that “China-Russia relations [are] not only in the fundamental interests of the two countries… but also conducive to peace,” according to a readout from Beijing’s foreign ministry.
“China is ready to work with Russia to… uphold fairness and justice in the world,” he added.
“It was the unprecedentedly high level of the strategic partnership between our countries that determined my choice of China as the first state that I would visit after taking office as president,” Putin told China’s Xinhua news agency before his trip.
Top allies
The two neighbors described their relationship as having “no limits” during a meeting in 2022 when the rest of the world decried Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Beijing has benefitted from supporting Moscow by receiving cheap gas and oil. Still, China has increasingly come under pressure from Western nations with its banks facing the threat of US sanctions that could interrupt Chinese access to international financial markets.
Prior to the trip, the Kremlin said Putin and Xi would “define key areas of development in Russian-Chinese cooperation, and exchange views on international and regional issues” during discussions on the “comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” between their nations.
In meetings between Xi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, the US diplomat warned Beijing over its support of Putin’s “brutal war of aggression in Ukraine.”
Ahead of Putin’s trip, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summed up the partnership between the two authoritarian nations, saying that Moscow and Beijing were “objectively interested in maintaining our lead in efforts to establish a more fair and democratic world order.”
Both leaders recently changed their respective nations’ constitutions to maintain power for life and are accused of using their nations’ military heft to intimidate their neighbors.
Source: Dw
