Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will pay an official visit to China, the Kremlin has announced.
According to Al Jazeera, the Kremlin stated that Putin and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, plan to “further strengthen the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” between Moscow and Beijing.
The Russian president will visit Beijing from May 19 to 20.
Putin is also scheduled to discuss economic and trade cooperation with Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Russia’s TASS news agency reported that the visit is timed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a key Moscow-Beijing agreement signed in 2001.
News of Putin’s forthcoming trip arrives one day after United States President Donald Trump departed China following the first presidential visit to Beijing in almost a decade.
Although Trump and Xi touted several broad trade deals, they appeared to make little public progress on key sticking points related to Taiwan or the US-Israel war on Iran.
They also touched on the Russia-Ukraine war, in which China is officially neutral and Xi has presented himself as a mediator.
China has also denied reports from Reuters and other news agencies showing that Chinese firms have single-handedly sustained Russian drone production, in part by shipping engines mislabelled as “industrial refrigeration units” to drone assembly plants.
