Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (Photo: Reuters).
“The visit was planned for May,” President Putin said at a business forum in Moscow on April 25, but did not provide further details.
This will likely be President Putin’s first foreign trip after being re-elected. The last time Mr. Putin visited China was in October last year.
While the West criticized the Russian presidential election, China was one of the countries that congratulated Mr. Putin on being elected for another 6-year term.
China has strengthened trade and military ties with Russia in recent years as the US and its allies imposed sanctions on Moscow for launching a military campaign in Ukraine.
The two countries announced their “unlimited” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, just days before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out.
Mr. Putin told reporters on March 17 that Russia and China share the same global outlook, have a strong relationship partly thanks to the good personal relationship between Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, and emphasized emphasized that Moscow and Beijing will further develop relations in the coming years. The two leaders often claim to have a close personal friendship and have met more than 40 times.
According to Chinese customs data, China-Russia trade reached 218.2 billion USD during the period from January to November 2023, exceeding the target of increasing bilateral trade to more than 200 billion USD by 2024 that the two water set out earlier.
