Russian President Vladimir Putin Lands in China to Meet Xi Jinping, Attend BRI Summit
News 18Ten years after toasting a budding friendship with vodka and cake, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will meet again in Beijing this week seeking to further deepen the “no-limits” partnership between their two countries. “ Russian delegation’s presence in Beijing is important for Moscow,” said Alicja Bachulska, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The threat of Putin’s ouster means “Beijing seeks to depersonalise the relationship and institutionalise ties between the two political systems… to ensure close ties with Russia regardless of who occupies the power vertical”, Webster said. “Since Moscow embarked on its all-out invasion of Ukraine, it has been put in a position where it is unprecedentedly dependent on China,” said Bjorn Alexander Duben, an international relations scholar at China’s Jilin University.