Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Thursday for his first trip abroad since reelection.
The two-day trip is the Russian leader’s second to China in six months.
Increasingly isolated from its former Western trade partners more than two years after launching a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Putin is searching for military and financial support from his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, as the war and related sanctions drag on with no end in sight.
Putin was welcomed by Chinese officials as well as a military honor guard when he touched down, before he was greeted by Xi at a grand welcoming ceremony outside central Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Both Russian and Chinese state media covered the arrival, carrying remarks by two leaders in which they hailed their relations.
“Relations between Russia and China are not opportunistic and not directed against anyone,” Putin said later in the day, adding: “Our cooperation in international matters is one of the stabilizing factors in the international arena.”
Xi then told Putin that “China-Russia relations [are] not only in the fundamental interests of the two countries… but also conducive to peace,” according to a readout from Beijing’s foreign ministry.
“China is ready to work with Russia to… uphold fairness and justice in the world,” he added.
“It was the unprecedentedly high level of the strategic partnership between our countries that determined my choice of China as the first state that I would visit after taking office as president,” Putin told China’s Xinhua news agency before his trip.
Source DW
