Putin and Xi visit China’s ‘Little Moscow’ as allies seek to cement economic ties – follow live updates | China

The Russian leader’s two-day visit to China comes just as his country’s forces pressed the offensive in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, which began last week in the most significant border incursion since the full-scale incursion began, forcing almost 8,000 people from their homes.

“This is Putin’s first trip since taking office and therefore aims to show that Sino-Russian relations are rising to another level,” independent Russian political analyst Konstantin Kalachev told AFP. “Not to mention the apparently sincere personal friendship between the two leaders.”

China has strengthened its trade and military ties with Russia in recent years after the US and its allies imposed sanctions on both countries, particularly Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

The West claims that China played a crucial role in helping Russia resist sanctions and supplied key technology that Russia used on the battlefield in Ukraine. China maintains a neutral position in the conflict but has backed Moscow’s claims that Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine by the West, despite Putin’s public acknowledgment of his desire to restore Russia’s centuries-old borders as the reason for his attack.

China, once Moscow’s junior partner in the global communist hierarchy, remains Russia’s most powerful friend in the world.

Some images came on the cables of Putin arriving in Harbin and being met at the airport by Chinese officials.

The connection between Russia and China has set “an example of peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation among major powers” that “contributes to regional and global peace, stability and prosperity,” China’s state Global Times the newspaper said in an editorial on Friday.

He praised the relationship as “unique in the history of modern international relations”, adding:

The two countries are not military-political allies, but rather represent a new model of great power relations characterized by non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of a third country.

He also wrote that the two countries: “jointly oppose zero-sum games and Cold War mentality, group politics, confrontational blocs, division of the world based on ideology and political systems, and confrontational policies and interference in the internal affairs of others countries’.

However, China is under increasing pressure from the West not to supply Russia with goods that could be used in its war against Ukraine.

Last year, bilateral trade reached a record $240.1 billion, and there are signs that even more goods — including dual-use technology that can be used in military operations — reach Russia from China through third countries.

Even without direct arms supplies to Russia, Western observers say China’s economic and political support for Russia has been a lifeline since February 2022. On Thursday, Putin said he was “grateful” to China for its efforts to try to resolved the “crisis in Ukraine”.

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