photo credit: Yonhap News
Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing to visit Central Asia next month for a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Sources involved in the preparations for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit to be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on September 15-16, said that Xi had hinted at the possibility of a face-to-face meeting this week, according to reports.
A final decision has not yet been made, but sources said that the meeting took advantage of this meeting as an opportunity to prepare for bilateral summits with the heads of other participating countries, including Pakistan, India and Turkey, in case of a face-to-face meeting.
Earlier, Russian state news agency TASS News reported that Putin would attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
Xi’s sudden consideration of attending the summit was not unrelated to the recent escalation of tensions with the West over the Taiwan issue following US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, officials familiar with the visit plan explained.
It is a message that by attending this meeting, it is calculating that it will fight pressure from the West by forging closer security cooperation with countries that are not allies of the United States.
If President Xi visits Samarkand to meet with Putin, it will be a stepping stone for further strengthening Sino-Russian relations and building a common front, which has been close since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ahead of a meeting with US President Joe Biden, which is expected in November. seems to be
Xi is expected to hold his first face-to-face meeting with President Biden, who will also come to Bali as he has agreed to attend the G20 summit of 20 major countries in Bali, Indonesia in November.
