Russian President Vladimir Putin will make an official two-day visit to China from May 19 to 20, the Kremlin announced on Saturday.
The announcement came just a day after US President Donald Trump wrapped up his own trip to Beijing.
The Kremlin said Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping plan to “further strengthen the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” between Moscow and Beijing. Putin is also scheduled to discuss economic and trade cooperation with Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Russia’s TASS news agency reported that the visit is timed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a key Moscow-Beijing agreement signed in 2001.
The timing is laden with geopolitical significance. News of Putin’s forthcoming trip arrives one day after US President Donald Trump departed China following the first presidential visit to Beijing in almost a decade.
Although Trump and Xi touted several broad trade deals, they appeared to make little public progress on key sticking points related to Taiwan or the US-Israel war on Iran. They also touched on the Russia-Ukraine war, in which China is officially neutral and Xi has presented himself as a mediator.
Putin’s arrival in Beijing so swiftly after Trump’s departure sends a pointed signal about where China’s deeper strategic loyalties lie.
Xi’s “no limits” alliance with Putin — announced just before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — has undercut Beijing’s claims of neutrality. China has also denied reports showing that Chinese firms have sustained Russian drone production, in part by shipping engines mislabelled as “industrial refrigeration units” to drone assembly plants.
Economically, the two nations have grown increasingly intertwined since Western sanctions isolated Moscow.
China is now by far Russia’s biggest trading partner by volume, and transactions are almost entirely carried out in Russian roubles and Chinese yuan. Last month, Xi pressed for “closer and stronger strategic coordination” between Beijing and Moscow in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
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