President Vladimir Putin will meet China’s Xi Jinping for talks in Beijing in October, Russia mentioned on Tuesday, Putin’s first identified journey overseas since an arrest warrant was issued towards him over the deportation of youngsters from Ukraine.
Nikolai Patrushev, an in depth Putin ally and the secretary of Russia’s Safety Council, mentioned Russia and China ought to deepen cooperation within the face of the West’s try and include them each.
He was quoted by the Interfax information company as saying that the talks in Beijing could be “thorough”, at a gathering in Moscow with China’s high diplomat, Wang Yi.
Putin will attend the third Belt and Highway Discussion board after an invite by Xi throughout a high-profile go to to Moscow in March.
Days earlier than that go to, the Worldwide Legal Court docket (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest on suspicion of illegally deporting tons of of youngsters or extra from Ukraine.
Moscow denies the allegations and the Kremlin mentioned the warrant was proof of the West’s hostility to Russia, which opened a felony case towards the ICC prosecutor and the judges who issued the warrant.
Russia full-scale invasion of Ukraine early final yr has triggered one of many deadliest European conflicts since World Conflict Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West because the 1962 Cuban Missile Disaster.
Putin has pivoted in the direction of China, and Xi has stood by him.
Chinese language-Russian commerce has soared because the invasion, and Russia has bought Asian powers together with China larger volumes of the oil it might probably now not promote to the West due to sanctions.
Putin final visited Beijing in February 2022, days earlier than the invasion, the place he and Xi introduced a ‘no limits’ partnership .
Moscow says this doesn’t imply a army alliance. Putin and Xi share a broad world view, which sees the West as decadent and in decline simply as China challenges US supremacy in every thing from expertise to espionage and army energy.
Commerce between Russia and China soared 30 per cent within the first half of this yr and can rise to greater than $200 billion in 2023, Russian Financial system Minister Maxim Reshetnikov mentioned on a go to to China.
“We are actively developing investments, including in our large gas and petrochemical projects, where we actively use Chinese technologies,” Reshetnikov mentioned.
“We are strongly interested in transforming technological cooperation into investment cooperation, so that Chinese companies actively enter into these projects, invest in capital, and lend money, because the projects are capital-intensive and not all of them can be fully provided for by the Russian financial system.”
The US sees China as its gravest long-term “strategic competitor” and Russia as an “acute threat”. China has shunned condemning Russia’s operation towards Ukraine or calling it an invasion, in step with the Kremlin, which casts the conflict as a “special military operation”.
