Russia-China ties ‘stabilising’ force in world, Putin says before Xi talks

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is travelling to China for second meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in less than a year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed Moscow and Beijing’s deepening ties as a “stabilising” force on the world stage ahead of talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

In an address ahead of a two-day visit to China that begins on Tuesday, Putin said Moscow and Beijing did not wish to align against any other country but to work together for “peace and universal prosperity.”

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“It is in this spirit that Moscow and Beijing coordinate efforts to defend international law and the principles of the UN Charter in their entirety,” said Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has been widely condemned as a violation of international law.

Russia and China, he added, also supported cooperation via other multilateral fora, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS.

Putin said that Moscow-Beijing relations had developed to an “unprecedented level”, and the sides now supported each other on such fundamental matters as the “protection of sovereignty and national unity”.

“Russia and China look confidently towards the future, actively developing cooperation in politics, economics, defence, expanding cultural exchanges, and fostering interpersonal interaction, in essence, jointly doing everything to deepen bilateral cooperation and advance global development for the wellbeing of both nations,” Putin said in the speech aired by state media.

Putin is scheduled to arrive in China on Tuesday evening ahead of talks with Xi on Wednesday.

The summit, the second face-to-face meeting between the leaders in less than a year, comes as Russia and China are widely seen as being increasingly aligned in challenging the United States’s standing as the dominant power in world affairs.

Putin’s visit, which is timed to mark the 25th anniversary of the sides’ Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation, also comes just days after Xi and US President Donald Trump wrapped up a two-day summit in Beijing.

Trump and Xi’s summit, a follow-up to talks held in South Korea in October, featured warm rhetoric and pageantry but produced few concrete agreements on the many issues of contention between the sides, including trade, AI, Taiwan and the US-Israel war on Iran.

Alexander Korolev, a senior lecturer in international relations at UNSW in Australia, said Putin and Xi would use their summit to strengthen their partnership at a time when each of them is facing strategic pressures.

“For Russia, the visit demonstrates that it retains high‑level political access and economic partners despite Western pressure,” Korolev told Al Jazeera.

“For China, it reaffirms that the relationship with Russia remains a reliable pillar of its strategic environment.”

“The visit also highlights Beijing’s foreign policy agency and the fact that China’s foreign policy stands on its own and is not shaped by others’ preferences,” Korolev added.

Putin and Xi, who have met dozens of times in an official capacity, have ramped up their economic and diplomatic cooperation in recent years amid Moscow’s international isolation due to its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Two-way trade between Russia and China more than doubled from 2020 to 2024, reaching $245bn, according to the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Russia’s exports to China are largely made up of oil, gas and coal, while China supplies Russia with significant quantities of machinery, vehicles, electrical equipment and textiles.