MOSCOW, SEPT 13 – Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit Russia next month for the BRICS bloc summit for developing economies, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi confirmed yesterday.
The move comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter Western global influence and is Xi’s second visit to Russia since February 2022.
Wang Yi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg yesterday and both praised the relationship between the two countries. China’s foreign minister said that Xi ‘with pleasure accepted’ Putin’s invitation to attend the BRICS summit in the city of Kazan in October.
Putin will announce that the two will also sit down to meet in Kazan to discuss various aspects of Russian-Chinese relations which have ‘developed quite successfully in all directions’.
Xi last visited Russia in March 2023 and Putin responded with his own visit to China in October of that year. The two leaders also met in Beijing in May, where Putin made his first foreign trip in his fifth term as president, and in Kazakhstan in July.
Moscow has shifted most of its energy exports to China and relies on Chinese companies to import high-tech components for Russia’s military industry. The two countries have also strengthened their military ties in the last two years.
The BRICS alliance, which was founded in 2006, aims to strengthen the voices of developing economies to counterbalance the Western-led global power. Its founding members have called for a fairer management of world power and reform of international institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. – AP
