Russia's Putin arrives in China's Tianjin for security summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Sunday for a regional security summit, Chinese and Russian state media reported.

The four-day trip, unusual for the Russian leader, began with a red-carpet welcome, with senior city officials greeting him on the tarmac, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV described ties between Beijing and Moscow as the “best in history” and “the most stable, mature and strategically significant among major countries”. President Xi Jinping is hosting around 20 world leaders in Tianjin, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. It will be the largest gathering since the bloc was founded in 2001.

Once focused on security and counter-terrorism, the SCO has expanded to cover economic and military cooperation, now counting 10 permanent members and 16 dialogue or observer states. Xi is expected to use the summit to promote an alternative to a U.S.-led global order and to give Russia a diplomatic boost as it faces Western sanctions over Ukraine.

Ahead of his visit, Putin denounced Western trade restrictions in an interview with China’s Xinhua news agency, saying Moscow and Beijing jointly opposed “discriminatory” sanctions. Russia’s economy, weighed down by curbs and the cost of the conflict, is close to recession. Leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia will also attend, with China presenting the summit as a show of unity among the so-called “Global South”.

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