Putin in China seeking support for Ukraine war effort

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing Wednesday for two days of meetings with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Putin’s second trip to China in six months will focus on military and financial assistance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing on Thursday for his first trip abroad since his reelection.

The two-day trip is the Russian leader’s second to China in six months.

Increasingly isolated internationally 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, to sustain his effort in the face of growing global sanctions and a war that his troops have been unable to win despite advantages in arms and numbers.

Putin was welcomed by Chinese officials as well as a military honor guard when he touched down.

Both Russian and Chinese state media covered the arrival.

Putin praised Xi for helping to build a “strategic partnership” with Russia.

“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.

‘No limits’ relationship

The two neighbors described their relationship as having “no limits” during a meeting in 2022 when the rest of the world decried Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

Beijing has benefitted from supporting Moscow by receiving cheap gas and oil. Still, China has increasingly come under pressure from Western nations with its banks facing the threat of US sanctions that could interrupt Chinese access to international financial markets.

Prior to the trip, the Kremlin said Putin and Xi would “define key areas of development in Russian-Chinese cooperation, and exchange views on international and regional issues” during discussions on the “comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” between their nations.

In meetings between Xi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, the US diplomat warned Beijing over its support of Putin’s “brutal war of aggression in Ukraine.”

Ahead of Putin’s trip, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summed up the partnership between the two authoritarian nations, saying that Moscow and Beijing were “objectively interested in maintaining our lead in efforts to establish a more fair and democratic world order.”

Both leaders recently changed their respective nations’ constitutions to maintain power for life and are accused of using their nations’ military heft to intimidate their neighbors.