Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Jie is scheduled to pay a four-day visit to Moscow on Monday. The main topic of discussions may be mutual deepening of relations between Russia and China, perhaps preparing for Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing in October. The Russian President will attend the conference, which is being organized on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative.
This will be the third such forum in the country, as the Belt and Road Initiative conference was previously held in 2017 and 2019, and Putin also participated in the negotiations then.
What makes this case special is that, following the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, this is expected to be the Russian president’s first trip abroad. This previously resulted in Putin being unable to attend the BRICS summit in South Africa or the G20 meeting in India. The Rome Statute has been signed by 123 countries, but China has not, so it is not bound by the ICC’s order.
Meanwhile, China has also begun preparing for another high-level meeting, an in-person meeting between US President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s first man, expected to be held in November this year.
Cover image credit: Manuel Augusto Moreno via Getty Images
