Vladimir Putin may visit China

Commenting on media reports about Vladimir Putin’s readiness to attend the third Belt and Road Forum in China, which will be held in October, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian president, said on August 30 that the issue of interstate visits is now “worked out.” The fact that Putin accepted the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit China in October, Bloomberg reported yesterday, citing three sources.

“It is too early to report this. I can only say that a rather tight schedule of exchange of visits at various levels, including at the highest level, is indeed being worked out between Russia and China,” Peskov said.

In July, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov allowed Putin to visit China: he confirmed that the invitation to the forum had been received and that the head of state was planning to go there. In May, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev thanked China for inviting Putin to speak at the event “as the chief guest.”

Putin’s most recent trips abroad have so far been in December 2022 – that month he visited Kyrgyzstan, where he took part in the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, and Belarus.

Xi Jinping presented the concept of the Belt and Road Initiative (OBOR, later rebranded as the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) in autumn 2013 at Nazarbayev University in Astana. The initiative included the creation of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The goal is to create a transit and transport system that will connect China with the countries of Eurasia and Africa. In 2018, a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries joined the Belt and Road. In total, as of August 2023, 155 countries were affected in one way or another by the initiative, according to Fudan University researchers. At the same time, as Reuters previously wrote, a number of IPIP projects, for which China began issuing loans to developing countries, did not bring the expected effect, and therefore, since 2016, it had to issue new loans to service those previously issued in the amount of $104 billion.

Russia supported Beijing’s initiative more declaratively, without announcing that it would join it. In 2015, Putin and Xi signed a joint statement of cooperation to “link the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Silk Road Economic Belt.”

Practically any form of trade and economic cooperation with countries that have expressed support for the Belt and Road Initiative is considered by the Chinese authorities as participation in it, i.e., theoretically, the entire spectrum of economic cooperation between Russia and China can be included there, says Yana Leksyutina, professor at St Petersburg University. The expert cited Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG-2 as flagship examples of joint projects. According to Leksyutina, the Chinese arbitrarily classify some joint projects as part of the Belt and Road, and often nothing is said about this in official bilateral documents. The current format is suitable for Russia, in which it combines its EAEU project with the Chinese initiative, as this emphasizes the partnership nature of the interaction of the parties, Leksyutina summed up.

Putin’s possible visit to China in October can be seen both as a response to Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March, and as a continuation of the tradition of participation in the forum, says Vasily Kashin, director of the HSE Center for Contemporary Studies. At the same time, earlier the Russian leader visited him in a special capacity – as an honored guest, since under the agreement on pairing the EAEU and the Belt and Road, Moscow does not participate in the initiative of the PRC, but supports it. The Chinese, when it suits them, refer to Russia as the country of the “Belt and Road”, and Moscow adheres to the previous formulations. Moreover, the Chinese, describing cooperation with Russia in the Arctic, use the term “Polar Silk Road”, but it is not found in official documents. Probably, in the new conditions, Russia will reconsider its previous attitude to interaction within the framework of the Belt and Road, increasing its level of participation in it, adds Kashin.

There are no specific investment plans with a clear timetable within the framework of the Chinese initiative, and China’s cooperation with the countries that supported its project has been developing before, and therefore it is difficult to isolate specific results. At the same time, the Belt and Road still has one practical offshoot – this is the international Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which, however, practically did not invest in Russia even before the start of the NWO, and in March 2022 officially curtailed its activities in Russia.