Xi arrives in Moscow to stage China's new role as international mediator

Xi Jinping landed at Moscow's Vnúkovo airport on a Monday afternoon in late March, stepping onto Russian soil for the first time since securing an unprecedented third term as China's president. It was his opening move on the world stage as an even more consolidated leader—and he had chosen Russia, not Washington or Brussels, as his first official destination. The timing was deliberate. A year had passed since Vladimir Putin sent tanks across Ukraine's border, upending the European order. Now, with Russia isolated by Western sanctions and facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Putin himself, Beijing was arriving to reposition itself as something new: not merely a bystander in the West's conflicts, but a serious broker of global peace.

In the hours before their formal summit, Putin and Xi met informally at the Kremlin. The Russian leader offered effusive praise. "China has made a colossal leap forward in recent years," Putin told him. "This generates genuine interest around the world, and we even envy you a little." Xi responded with a gift wrapped in diplomatic language, praising Russia's strength and predicting that the Russian people would firmly support Putin in the elections scheduled for the following year. The exchange was cordial, almost tender—two leaders performing confidence in each other for cameras and the world watching.

But the real substance lay in what both men had written before Xi's arrival. Each had published an essay in the other's state media, and the differences between them were as telling as the similarities. Xi's piece, which appeared in the Russian state news agency and newspaper, framed the visit as "a journey of friendship, cooperation, and peace." He repeated the word "friendship" nine times. He presented China's twelve-point peace proposal for Ukraine—unveiled in late February—as balanced and constructive, a framework that "takes into account the legitimate concerns of all parties." Yet the proposal itself was notably vague. It called for respect for all nations' sovereignty but never explicitly named which nation had invaded which, never specified which territories were occupied. The West had received it coolly. Ukraine's response was cautious but not dismissive. Now Xi and Putin would discuss it face to face for the first time.

Putin's essay, published in China's official Communist Party newspaper, was more revealing in what it omitted than what it said. He carefully avoided calling the relationship an "alliance"—using instead the term "partnership." He emphasized the personal bond between the two leaders, dating back to their first meeting in 2010, and he highlighted the shared interest in countering American dominance. But he made no mention of China's proposal that Ukraine recover all its territory, including Crimea. Instead, he stressed that he would negotiate only "taking into account the prevailing geopolitical realities"—a euphemism for keeping the land Russia had seized. He also expressed gratitude for China's "balanced line" on Ukraine, a polite way of saying Beijing had not condemned the invasion, had not called it a war, and had instead maintained a calculated tilt toward Moscow.

The numbers told their own story. Trade between the two countries had grown 116 percent during Xi's decade in power, reaching $190 billion in 2022. Energy imports alone—oil, gas, coal—had jumped 56 percent in a single year, to $81.3 billion, as China capitalized on Russia's isolation to buy at steep discounts. The Kremlin was betting that this economic lifeline could substitute for the Western markets now closed to it. Putin spoke of the bilateral trade crossing $200 billion not in 2024, but in 2023 itself. He called the planned Power of Siberia pipeline expansion "without exaggeration, the deal of the century," though even at full capacity it would deliver only a fraction of what Europe had once imported.

Xi arrived with fresh credibility as a mediator. Ten days earlier, China had brokered the restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran—a rupture that had lasted since 2016. The European Union was watching closely, insisting it had received assurances that China was not supplying weapons to Russia, yet also noting American skepticism of those claims. Brussels wanted proof of Beijing's proclaimed neutrality. The best evidence, European officials suggested, would be if Xi also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—a call that American media reported might happen by video link in the coming days.

What remained unspoken was perhaps most important. Russia and China had a long history of suspicion, rooted in territorial anxieties and ideological competition. Even in the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Maoist China had broken relations. Moscow had always viewed Beijing as a potential threat to Siberia. Yet here they stood, bound by mutual interest against the West, by energy flows and yuan transactions, by the simple fact that each needed the other more than either needed the world that had rejected them. It was not an alliance, both leaders insisted. It was something more durable and more fragile: a partnership of convenience, dressed in the language of eternal friendship.