China’s Xi will visit Russia in 2025, Russian ambassador says

(Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping will visit Russia in 2025, Russia’s state-run RIA news agency quoted Moscow’s ambassador to Beijing as saying early on Friday.

“As for concrete bilateral events, I can say that the appropriate plans are actively being drawn up,” Ambassador Igor Morgulov told RIA.

“What can be said that is no secret, in terms of priority, is that the chairman of the People’s Republic of China is expected in Russia next year.”

At a regular press conference, China’s foreign ministry did not confirm the visit, but reiterated that the two countries maintained close contacts at all levels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China in February 2022, proclaiming a “no limits” partnership days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. He was in Beijing again last May, after his re-election by a landslide, welcoming a “new era” of relations focusing on opposition to U.S. policy.

Xi was received in the Kremlin as a “dear friend” in 2023 after he obtained an unprecedented third term in office.

Morgulov also told RIA that China, which has refrained from condemning Russia’s 34-month-old war in Ukraine, understood the basis for the conflict “in as much as they are coming up against many of the same challenges — the U.S. and its allies are boosting pressure on China in the Asia-Pacific region”.

NATO, he said, is “devising plans to move its military infrastructure” into the region.

Russia and China had to respond to U.S. policy jointly, he said.

“In the international arena, it is up to our countries to respond further with a ‘dual counter-action’ to the ‘dual deterrence’ which the West is trying to pursue with regard to Russia and China,” RIA quoted him as saying.

China, working with Brazil, has put forward a peace plan to end the Ukraine war, calling for a freezing of battle lines and taking into account the security interests of both sides.

Russia has expressed support for the proposals.

Ukraine, which has proposed its own plans to end the conflict – the latest of which includes a request for NATO membership – has dismissed the China-Brazil initiative as serving Moscow’s interests.

Russian forces currently occupy about 20% of Ukraine’s territory and have recently been advancing at their fastest pace since the early days of the war.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski and by Liz Lee in Beijing; Editing by Jamie Freed and Kate Mayberry)