Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing to strengthen bilateral ties and discuss a range of geopolitical matters. The Sino-Russo summit comes less than a week after Xi welcomed President Donald Trump to his country.
Similar to how Trump was welcomed upon arrival in China, Putin was greeted with a red carpet and children happily cheering while waving Russian and Chinese flags. Also, just as during Trump’s meeting with Xi, Putin and the Chinese president met in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Energy reportedly was an integral topic in discussions between Xi and Putin, with the latter stating that Russia was committed to meeting China’s energy needs. They also discussed the details for a proposed Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline, which has been in talks for years but has stalled due to financial disagreements over construction costs and other issues, according to Reuters.
The POS2 is a proposed 1,616-mile pipeline estimated to transport 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia’s Arctic Yamal fields to China via Mongolia. An agreement was originally reached in September 2025, but the aforementioned delays have halted progress. Should it ever become a reality, the original agreement stipulated that the pipeline would run for 30 years.
While details of the pipeline were an important part of the Xi-Putin meeting, Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed that the agreement’s details are still not finalized. However, a “general understanding” was supposedly reached. Despite the lack of progress on POS2, Putin expressed enthusiasm over the “big potential in joint renewable energy projects.”
“Russian-Chinese energy cooperation is the driver of our economic interaction,” Putin said, according to a transcript provided by the Kremlin. “Russia remains a reliable supplier of resources amid the Middle East crisis, while China acts as a responsible consumer of these resources.”
“Our priorities include major joint projects in industry, agriculture, transport and high technology, of course,” Putin added.
China is a substantial consumer of Russian energy, with the country recently increasing its imports of Russian oil by “35% year over year in the first quarter,” according to CNBC.
“I would like to point out that Russia and China are actively cooperating in the energy sector. Our country is one of the largest exporters of oil, natural gas, including liquefied gas, and coal to China. We are, of course, ready to continue to reliably ensure uninterrupted supplies of all these fuels to the rapidly growing Chinese market,” said Putin, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
The two leaders also discussed the importance of global geopolitics and the rising tensions worldwide. Unlike his meeting with President Trump, Xi released a joint statement with Putin, warning against a “return to the law of the jungle” in foreign affairs.
“The global situation is becoming more complex,” read Putin and Xi’s joint statement. “The global peace and development agenda is facing new risks and challenges, and there is a danger of fragmentation of the international community and a return to the ‘law of the jungle.’”
“Attempts by a number of states to unilaterally manage global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world, and limit the sovereign development of other countries, in the spirit of the colonial era, have failed,” they said.
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And while the subject of the joint statement was “deepening relations of good neighborliness, friendship, and cooperation,” both leaders condemned recent geopolitical events that could be interpreted as criticisms of the United States, even though neither Xi nor Putin referenced their intended target.
Xi and Putin blasted “treacherous military strikes against other countries, the hypocritical use of negotiations as cover for preparing such strikes, the assassination of leaders of sovereign states, the destabilization of the domestic political situation in these states and the provocation of regime change, and the brazen kidnapping of national leaders for trial.”
Moreover, in further comments criticizing such military operations, Xi and Putin’s statement cited the United Nations Charter, claiming the strikes “grossly violate the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter, the norms of international law and international relations, and cause irreparable damage to the foundations of the world order formed following World War Two.”