Russian President Vladimir Putin opens a visit to Beijing today that will focus on energy sales, cementing Xi Jinping’s status as a leader who holds court and whom fellow heads-of-state increasingly travel to see.
The timing of the trip — days after Xi hosted US President Donald Trump — is coincidental, however, given Trump’s travels were rescheduled from March.
It will also likely underscore the increasingly lopsided relationship between Russia and China: Core to the talks will be a gas pipeline long in the making, which Moscow hopes will be of renewed importance to Beijing given uncertainty in global energy supplies because of the Iran war. Also likely on the agenda: the Ukraine war, which Xi reportedly told Trump that Putin may regret.