• Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit China for two days.
• This will be Putin’s first foreign trip since his fifth term.
• Russia and China are in dispute with democracies and NATO.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will make a two-day state visit to China this week. It stated that Putin will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during his visit, which is scheduled to start on Thursday.

In a statement, the Kremlin confirmed the trip and stated that Putin was going on Xi’s invitation. It noted that this would be Putin’s first foreign trip since he was sworn in as president and began his fifth term in office.

The two continent-sized authoritarian states, increasingly in dispute with democracies and NATO, seek to gain influence in Africa, the Middle East, and South America. China has backed Russia’s claim that President Vladimir Putin launched his assault on Ukraine in 2022 because of Western provocations, without producing any solid evidence.

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