Putin, whose military is currently assaulting the Ukrainian city Kharkiv, needs to curry favor to win the war he started.
Just and democratic! « We are working in solidarity on the formulation of a more just and democratic multipolar world order, » said Russian President Vladimir Putin of his partnership with Chinese President Xi Jinping, lying through his teeth as he arrived in Beijing for diplomatic talks.
This month, Putin was inaugurated for yet another term as president. That he chose China as his first state visit of this term, and traveled with such a massive delegation, is of some significance—as well as the fact that the visit came on the heels of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s China visit last month, in which he raised concerns over Xi’s enabling of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
During the meetings, Putin hyped how China is Russia’s top trade partner, as well as their future collaborations « in energy and nuclear power research, » per The New York Times, though he neglected « mention of a proposed natural gas pipeline to China that Moscow would like to see built. »
A joint statement that emerged from the visit « spoke of concerns about what were described as U.S. efforts to violate the strategic nuclear balance, about global U.S. missile defence that threatened Russia and China, and about U.S. plans for high precision non-nuclear weapons, » reported Reuters.
Putin, whose military is currently assaulting the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv from above, needs to curry even more favor with Xi to win the war he started in Ukraine and ensure he can rely on Chinese help.
