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Cold War 2.0 shifted into a new gear Monday as Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow in a major show of solidarity with Russian President Vladimir Putin against the United States and the West.
Mr. Xi is seeking to highlight China’s rising diplomatic clout during the three-day state visit, his first overseas trip since formally securing an unprecedented third five-year term as president earlier this month. Analysts say he also aims to give the embattled Mr. Putin a boost just days after an international arrest warrant was issued for the Russian leader on war crimes charges related to his troubled invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukraine war and the prospect that Beijing could emerge as a broker of peace talks hang prominently over Mr. Xi’s visit, which comes amid growing U.S. concern that China is using its growing military and financial clout to challenge American influence around the globe.
Many are framing the Chinese leader’s trip to the Russian capital as a powerful signal to Western leaders allied with Ukraine against Russia’s invasion that their efforts to diplomatically and economically isolate Mr. Putin have fallen short.
While China has tacitly backed Russia in Ukraine — buying up Russian oil and gas sanctioned by the West — Mr. Xi has recently begun calling for an end of the war.
Mr. Putin has appeared to embrace the messaging. As he greeted Mr. Xi at the Kremlin on Monday, the Russian president said he welcomed the Chinese leader’s plan for “settlement of the acute crisis in Ukraine.”
The two men met for four hours of private talks before attending a state dinner, with neither side offering specifics on any policy breakthroughs or new initiatives. Mr. Xi in his public remarks made no reference at all to Ukraine or the war. The summit continues Tuesday with broader meetings including top aides to both leaders and another ceremonial dinner in an ornate Kremlin hall.
With the details of Mr. Xi’s peace plan unclear, Chinese state media has cast the Xi-Putin summit as one about great-power alignment and solidarity more than anything relating specifically to Russia’s violent incursion in Ukraine.
“Guided by the two leaders, China and Russia have blazed a path of major-country relations featuring strategic trust and good neighborliness, setting a new paradigm for international relations,” stated a commentary published in Communist Party-run news outlets Monday.
The Biden administration and its European allies have given the Chinese plan a chilly reception, saying in its present form it would lock in some Russian territorial grabs since the invasion began in February 2022.
“The world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war on its own terms,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at the State Department Monday, in some of Washington’s sharpest criticisms to date on the Beijing blueprint. A plan that does not restore to Ukraine all of its territory “is a stalling tactic at best or is merely seeking to facilitate an unjust outcome. That is not constructive diplomacy.”
Even as Mr. Blinken was speaking, the State Department was making public Monday a new $350 million package of high-end U.S. military aid to Kyiv, including ammunition, Bradley armored fighting vehicles, fuel tanker trucks and anti-tank weapons.
Moscow and Beijing have described Mr. Xi’s three-day trip as an opportunity to deepen the “no-limits friendship” that the two leaders famously outlined in a joint statement at their last meeting just more than a year ago — just weeks before Russian forces entered Ukraine.
