Putin to visit China twice this year

itar-tass.com

President Vladimir Putin will make two trips to China this year, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Putin will travel to Shanghai this spring, and then he will visit Beijing,” he said after a meeting between the leaders of the two countriesin Sochi on Thursday, February 6. Beijing is to host a G20 summit this year. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed different issues, including economic and military-technical cooperation, international issues, and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, with a special focus on Syria. “Both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to close coordination in the international arena,” Peskov said, referring to the situation in Syria, among others. “We will continue to coordinate our actions,” he added. In his opinion, cooperation with China develops positively. He admitted that “there is the commercial side where each country defends its own interests.” “But this does not run counter to cooperation,” he said and named joint work to build a wide-bodied aircraft as an example. “We are at the very beginning of the road but we have agreed to step up our work,” Peskov said.