MOSCOW: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow on Monday (Mar 20) where he was expected to press Beijing’s role as a potential peacemaker in the Ukraine conflict while Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped for support against Western pressure.
Xi’s three-day trip to Russia – his first in nearly four years – has been touted by Beijing as a “visit for peace” as China seeks to play mediator in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
It also comes over a year after Russia’s attack on its European neighbour isolated Moscow on the international stage.
Xi will be the first national leader to shake Putin’s hand since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him on Friday over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia since its invasion.
Moscow said the charge was among a number of “clearly hostile displays” and Beijing said it reflects double standards.
Russia is presenting Xi’s trip as evidence that it has a powerful friend prepared to stand with it against a hostile West that it accuses of trying to isolate and defeat Moscow.
“We can feel the geopolitical landscape in the outside world undergoing drastic changes,” Putin said in an article in China’s People’s Daily published on the Kremlin website, adding that he had high hopes for the visit from his “good old friend”.
For Xi, the visit is a diplomatic tightrope.
China has released a 12-point proposal to solve the Ukraine crisis, but at the same time strengthened ties with Moscow.
China has repeatedly dismissed Western accusations that it is planning to arm Russia but says it wants a closer energy partnership after boosting imports of Russian coal, gas and oil following Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. Western sanctions on Russian energy mean Beijing has saved billions of dollars.
Xi and Putin will have an “informal” one-on-one meeting and dinner on Monday before negotiations on Tuesday, Putin’s top foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian news agencies.
They will sign an accord “on strengthening (the two countries’) comprehensive partnership and strategic relations entering a new era”, the Kremlin has said, as well as a joint declaration on Russian-Chinese economic cooperation until 2030.
Xi wrote in an article published in Russia that the two countries adhered to the concept of “eternal friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation” and that China’s Ukraine peace proposal, released last month, reflects global views.
“Complex problems do not have simple solutions,” Xi wrote in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, a daily published by the Russian government, according to a Reuters translation from Russian.