Putin-Xi Summit Tomorrow May Signal Closer Ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping will host Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing tomorrow.

• The meeting is believed to be the first in-person summit held by Xi since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.
• Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov met today in Beijing to lay the groundwork for the meeting.
• The two leaders are expected to ratify new agreements on gas supplies and it comes amidst a highly challenging geopolitical environment for the Russian leader. If China agrees to buy more Russian gas it could mitigate the economic effects of likely US sanctions.
• Putin recently expressed concerns over the threat of US sanctions in his first public comments on the Ukraine crisis in a number of weeks. Putin still maintains that the Russian mobilisation on the Ukrainian border is a response to Western militarisation of Eastern Europe.
• Observers will watching to see if talks of a deeper bilateral relationship emerge from the meeting. At the UN Security Council meeting last week China expressed cautious support of Russia and said that 'Cold War' security frameworks (NATO) should be abandoned in favour of more mutually beneficial security structures.