Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday (1/9) that he hoped to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping soon, following earlier reports that he planned to visit China in October.
Russia has moved closer to China as its strongest ally since Western countries alienated it last year following Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine.
Beijing refuses to blame Moscow for the war and instead condemns Western sanctions against Russia, even though China benefits from getting discounts on oil and gas that Russia can no longer sell to Europe.
Russian foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov said in July that Putin planned to visit China in October during the third “Belt and Road” forum. He said this following Xi’s invitation when he made a high-level state visit to Russia in March.
Putin and Xi heralded an era of closer ties, and both rejected a Western-based world order. They signed a “no-limits” partnership agreement in Beijing last year, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.
But Putin, speaking in a televised meeting with selected schoolchildren on the first day of the school year, did not explicitly confirm that he would travel to China again.
Putin is known to have not traveled abroad since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him in March, just before Xi’s visit, for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
“In the near future we will hold events, and there will be a meeting with the president of the People’s Republic of China,” he said, according to Russian news agency Interfax.
“He (Xi) called me his friend, and I am happy to call him my friend, because he is a person who did a lot for the development of Russian-Chinese relations,” Putin said. (ah/ft)