XI WELCOMES PUTIN IN BEIJING DAYS AFTER TRUMP VISIT, UNDERSCORING CHINA'S ROLE AS GLOBAL POWER BROKER

China's President Xi Jinping welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing on Wednesday for a two-day summit, the leaders' second meeting in the past year. Putin's arrival came just six days after U.S. President Donald Trump's own visit to the Chinese capital — an extraordinary concentration of high-stakes bilateral diplomacy that saw the world's two most powerful countries send their leaders to Beijing within the same week.

Energy is expected to dominate the talks. With Iran's disruption of the Strait of Hormuz elevating energy security concerns across Asia, Beijing has fresh incentive to lock in Russian oil and gas supply, while Moscow needs the revenue to sustain its war economy. Putin signaled last week that Russia is close to a "serious" oil and gas agreement with China, according to Al Jazeera.

The summit also marks the 25th anniversary of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation between the two countries, signed in 2001. Xi called on Beijing and Moscow to "seize the opportunity" and strengthen bilateral ties, according to the South China Morning Post. Ukraine, the Middle East, and broader geopolitical tensions are also on the agenda, with China maintaining its stated position as a neutral broker while deepening economic ties with Moscow.

Analysts say the back-to-back summits reflect Beijing's deliberate positioning as the world's indispensable diplomatic interlocutor. Within the span of six days, China held substantive talks with the leaders of both the United States and Russia — a feat that underscores the degree to which Xi has cultivated strategic ambiguity as a foreign policy asset, maintaining lines to Washington while deepening the Sino-Russian partnership that has grown significantly since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.