Chinese president Xi Jinping told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the international situation was gripped by chaos but that Beijing’s strategic partnership with Moscow was a force for stability amid the most significant changes seen in a century.
Mr Xi and Mr Putin in May pledged a “new era” of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive cold war hegemon sowing chaos across the world.
“At present, the world is going through changes unseen in a hundred years, the international situation is intertwined with chaos,” Mr Xi told Mr Putin in the Russian city of Kazan at the opening of the Brics summit.
“But I firmly believe that the friendship between China and Russia will continue for generations, and great countries’ responsibility to their people will not change.”
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Brics is an association of major emerging economies including its first five members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It expanded this year to take in Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia has also been invited to join.
Russia, waging war against Nato-supplied Ukrainian forces, and China, under pressure from a concerted US effort to counter its growing military and economic strength, increasingly have found common geopolitical cause.
The two, pushing back against perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline.
The US casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat, and president Joe Biden has said the democracies face a challenge from autocracies such as China and Russia.
Mr Putin called Mr Xi “dear friend” and said the partnership with China was a force for stability in the world. “Russian-Chinese co-operation in world affairs is one of the main stabilising factors on the world stage,” he said.
[ A new global order: Rising China and Russia rewrite the international rulebookOpens in new window ]
“We intend to further enhance co-ordination on all multilateral platforms in order to ensure global security and a just world order.”
Mr Xi said co-operation in the Brics group was “the most important platform for solidarity and co-operation between emerging market countries and developing countries in the world today”.
He said it was “a mainstay force in promoting the realisation of equal and orderly global multipolarity, as well as inclusive and tolerant economic globalisation”.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, told Mr Putin on the eve of the summit that he wanted peace in Ukraine and that New Delhi was ready to help achieve a truce to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since the second World War.
Mr Putin, who ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, wants the summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-western world after the US and its European and Asian allies tried to isolate Russia over the war.
[ India reaches deal with China on patrols at disputed borderOpens in new window ]
Russia is expecting 22 leaders to attend the summit meeting of the Brics, which accounts for 45 per cent of the world’s population and 35 per cent of the global economy.
Mr Putin thanked Mr Modi for accepting the invitation to visit Kazan, a city on the banks of the Volga, and said Russia and India shared a “privileged strategic partnership”.
Mr Modi thanked Mr Putin for his “strong friendship”, praised growing co-operation and the evolution of Brics, but also said that India felt the conflict in Ukraine should be ended peacefully.
“We have been in constant touch on the subject of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” Mr Modi said. “We believe that problems should be resolved only through peaceful means.” – Reuters
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