Putin arrives in Beijing for Xi summit days after Trump's visit

Vladimir Putin touched down in Beijing on Tuesday for what the Kremlin calls his twenty-fifth visit to China—a carefully timed arrival that came less than a week after Donald Trump had made the same journey. The Russian president was there for a two-day state visit, with the main event scheduled for Wednesday: a sit-down with Xi Jinping that both capitals were framing as a moment of historic alignment.

The timing was not accidental. This year marks a quarter-century since Russia and China signed their Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, and Moscow and Beijing were using the occasion to present themselves as anchors of stability in a fractured world. Before he landed, Putin released a message to the Chinese people calling Xi a "good friend" and declaring that relations between the two countries had reached an "unprecedented" level. He emphasized that personal contact between the two leaders helped translate "the most ambitious plans" into reality, and he pushed back against any suggestion that the partnership was directed against anyone else—they were working, he insisted, "in favor of peace and common development."

The agenda was dense. Middle East tensions, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and energy cooperation were the three pillars. On the energy front, Russia was hoping to move forward on stalled projects, particularly the Siberia Force-2 pipeline, which would pump more Russian gas into China. Last year alone, Russia had shipped 101 million tons of oil and 49 billion cubic meters of gas to its Asian neighbor, and Moscow wanted to deepen that flow.

But Ukraine hung over everything. The Kremlin expected to sign roughly forty agreements with China after the Xi meeting, including joint declarations on their strategic partnership and visions for a new international order. Yet several European governments were quietly pressing Beijing to use whatever leverage it had with Moscow to push toward a negotiated end to the war. That pressure had become more acute after the Financial Times reported that Xi had told Trump during his recent visit that Putin might come to regret launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On Tuesday, China's Foreign Ministry flatly denied the story, calling it "completely fabricated."

China's actual position on Ukraine had always been harder to pin down. Officially, Beijing called for respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations—language that, taken literally, would seem to side with Ukraine. But in the same breath, Chinese officials insisted on acknowledging the "legitimate security concerns" of all parties, a formulation that gave Moscow room to maneuver. It was a careful balance, one that allowed China to maintain its partnership with Russia while keeping some distance from the invasion itself. Whether that balance could hold as the war dragged on, and as Western capitals pressed harder for Beijing to break ranks, remained an open question as Putin settled into his meetings.