Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will sit down together again for the first time in three months. With Russia's dependence on China higher than ever amid a war in Ukraine now entering its fifth year, attention is focused on whether Beijing will use that leverage to press Moscow to end the conflict.
Xi and Putin will hold a summit on the 31st at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, according to The Wall Street Journal and Russia's TASS news agency on the 30th. The SCO is a security bloc created under Chinese leadership, with 10 member countries including Russia and Iran. The meeting runs for two days through September 1.
It is the first time the two leaders have met since talks in Beijing in May, three months ago. The focus of this meeting is the sharply diverging standing of Russia and China brought about by the war in Ukraine. The prolonged conflict has deepened Russia's reliance on China, while China has cemented its position as one of the world's two dominant powers in its competition with the United States. The Journal reported that the war in Ukraine has allowed China to secure a stable supply of cheaper Russian oil and to move into a Russian domestic market vacated by Western competitors, and that Russia's market has become so dependent on Chinese imports that industries across the economy have asked the Putin government to impose caps on those imports.
The choice of Kyrgyzstan as the venue also carries symbolic weight, the Journal noted. Kyrgyzstan was part of the former Soviet Union and still hosts a Russian air base. But it is one of the regions where Chinese influence has grown rapidly as Russia's international clout has weakened since the invasion of Ukraine.
Attention now turns to whether China will use that position to press Russia to halt the war and open negotiations. Beijing has so far offered only general statements on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has never condemned it outright. The meeting comes just after CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a secret visit to Moscow last week to urge Russia to end the war, and the two sides are expected to discuss the conflict.
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Experts say, however, that Xi is unlikely to raise concerns about the war publicly. Eva Seiwert, a senior researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, said that if the issue is discussed at all, it will most likely happen in closed-door talks that are not made public. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that in public Xi is expected to stick to familiar language, warning against an expansion of the war and calling for dialogue and a political settlement.
As Russia's dependence on China grows, so does criticism of Beijing within Russia. The complaint is that China is offloading its own problem of excess manufacturing capacity onto Russia while providing only the bare minimum of support needed to keep the country afloat. The Journal reported that when Russia proposed building a new natural gas pipeline to China, Beijing held out for prices as low as those in Russia's own domestic market. On the war itself, China has avoided supplying weapons directly, cooperating only by providing dual-use goods and drone components. Criticism of China surfaced earlier this year within United Russia, the country's ruling party, exposing the rift between the two governments. Yet the situation appears unlikely to reverse as long as the war continues. "There is very little Putin can do when it comes to China, and he still sees Xi as a strategic partner," Stanovaya said.
Beijing and Moscow are meanwhile expected to speak with one voice in criticizing U.S. hegemony, a stance the Journal assessed as lending support to an isolated Iranian government. China serves as an economic lifeline for Iran, which is under military and economic attack from the United States. Iran also maintains a strategic relationship with Russia, supplying the suicide drones Moscow has used in its attacks on Ukraine. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will hold a summit with Xi on the 31st and meet Putin the following day.
On the 30th, U.S. forces struck the Strait of Hormuz for the first time in about a month, escalating armed conflict between the two sides. The U.S. military said it carried out airstrikes on two rocket launchers used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to lay mines on Larak Island in the strait. Iran responded immediately by firing missiles at two air bases hosting U.S. troops in Jordan. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he plans to deliver a firm message at a Group of 20 finance ministers' meeting in the United States on the 31st that countries failing to sever economic ties with Iran will face secondary sanctions.
