China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin to make Substantial Statement

A Chinese top-diplomat announced on Thursday, that President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will make a substantial statement during Putin’s visit to China later this month.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is scheduled for an official state visit to China on invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi invited Putin to pay a visit to China and to attend the Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) from May 20 in Shanghai.

During a press briefing, the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping announced that the two top-leaders will exchange views on cooperation, coordination in international affairs as well as on major issues of common concern. The meeting is the second meeting between the Chinese and the Russian Presidents in 2014, and Putin’s first visit to the Chinese People’s Republic since Xi took office.

Vice Foreign Minister Cheng stressed that Xi and Putin will be showing the two countries willingness to firmly support each other with regard to their country’s path with regard to national development, as well as with regard to the strengthening of the two countries strategic cooperation on major international affairs. Cheng added, that the two presidents also would witness the signing of a series of important bilateral cooperation agreements.

The meeting has been scheduled against the backdrop of the deepening crisis in and over Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, where predominantly US and UK backed post-coup government’s military escalation and the deployment of 30.000 heavily armed troops to the countries southeastern regions has cast the country into a de facto civil war.

The visit also comes against the backdrop of increased international tension over Ukraine and sanctions against Russia by the G7, the US and EU. Additionally, Japan announced earlier this week that it had suspended talks about a peace treaty with Russia, to coordinate its policies with the G7.

So far, neither Beijing nor Moscow lift the veil about what Xi’s and Putin’s “substantial statement” contains. It is noteworthy, however, that sanctions have prompted Moscow to diversify payments in international trade to increasingly use national currencies instead of the dollar.

Within this context it may be worth noting that Xi and Putin, at the sideline of the 2013 G8 summit in St Petersburg, in September 2013, announced that the planned BRICS development bank would become operative by late 2015 or early 2015.