By Ryan Woo
BEIJING (Reuters) -On the eve of a go to to China, Russian chief Vladimir Putin blasted Western sanctions as his nation’s economic system teetered on the brink of recession, wounded by commerce curbs and the price of his conflict in Ukraine.
Russia and China collectively opposed “discriminatory” sanctions in international commerce, Putin said in a written interview with China’s official Xinhua information company printed on Saturday.
Putin will be in China, Russia’s greatest trading companion, from Sunday to Wednesday in a four-day go to that the Kremlin has called “unprecedented.”
The Russian chief will first attend the two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the northern Chinese port metropolis of Tianjin. The security-focused SCO, based by a group of Eurasian nations in 2001, has expanded to 10 everlasting members that now embody Iran and India.
Putin will then journey to Beijing to maintain talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and attend a huge army parade in the Chinese capital commemorating the finish of World War Two after Japan’s formal give up.
Earlier in May, Xi attended a army parade on Moscow’s Red Square marking the eightieth anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany. It was Xi’s eleventh go to to China’s giant neighbour since he grew to become president more than a decade in the past.
Russia has been hammered by a number of rounds of Western sanctions after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. U.S. President Donald Trump said he might impose “massive” sanctions on Russia relying on whether progress was potential in his bid to secure a peace deal.
“To sum up, economic cooperation, trade and industrial collaboration between our countries are advancing across multiple areas,” Putin said of China, which the West accuses of backing Russia’s so-called particular army operation in Ukraine.
“During my upcoming visit, we will certainly discuss further prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation and new steps to intensify it for the benefit of the peoples of Russia and China.”
When Western nations severed ties with Russia after Moscow’s launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China came to the rescue, shopping for Russian oil and promoting items from vehicles to electronics that pushed bilateral commerce to a file $245 billion in 2024.
China was by far Russia’s main trading companion by quantity and transactions between the nations were nearly utterly carried out in rubles and yuan, Putin said.
Russia was a main exporter of oil and fuel to China and the two sides continued joint efforts to cut back bilateral commerce limitations, he added.
“In recent years, the export of pork and beef to China has been launched. Overall, agricultural and food products occupy a prominent place in Russia’s exports to China,” he said.
He made no point out of EU accusations of Chinese support for Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, which the bloc describes as a critical risk to European security. China denies the allegations.
Putin and Xi declared a “no limits” strategic partnership in 2022. The two have met over 40 instances in the previous decade.
Wanted by the International Criminal Court over accusations of the conflict crime of illegally deporting tons of of kids from Ukraine, Putin last travelled in China in 2024.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Leslie Adler and Stephen Coates)
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