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  "path": "/news/2001737/xi-and-putin-unite-in-criticism-of-us-on-nuclear-security-issues",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-20T12:13:02.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.dawn.com",
  "tags": [
    "World",
    "Golden Dome",
    "hosted Trump",
    "expiry",
    "treaty",
    "sealed in 2022",
    "invasion of Ukraine",
    "yielded little",
    "Power of Siberia 2",
    "sanctions",
    "last visit",
    "opportunity to Putin",
    "sought",
    "meeting Xi"
  ],
  "textContent": "China and Russia condemned United States President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defence shield plans and Washington’s “irresponsible” nuclear policy at a joint summit on Wednesday, a week after President Xi Jinping hosted Trump in Beijing.\n\nA statement from Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin said Trump’s plan for a ground- and space-based missile interceptor system posed a threat to global strategic stability.\n\nIt also criticised the United States over the expiry of the last remaining treaty restricting the size of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, which lapsed in February with Trump failing to respond to Moscow’s proposal to extend the limits by a year.\n\nBoth sides jointly signed a statement on strengthening comprehensive strategic coordination and a declaration advocating multi-polarity in the world order.\n\n“The global agenda of peace and development is facing new risks and challenges, with the danger of fragmentation of the international community and a drift back toward the ‘law of the jungle’,” their joint declaration said, according to the Kremlin.\n\nXi and Putin, who have met more than 40 times, both stressed the closeness of the Russia-China ties that they sealed in 2022 with the signing of a strategic partnership treaty, less than three weeks before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.\n\n> For Xi, it capped a remarkable week of diplomacy in which he has set out to showcase China as a pillar of stability in a world rocked by trade wars and military conflicts in Iran and Ukraine.\n\nWhile the summit with Trump was largely about managing tensions between the world’s two most powerful countries, the meeting with Putin posed a different challenge — how to demonstrate progress in a relationship that the two sides have already proclaimed is “without limits”.\n\nIn contrast to Trump’s visit last week, which yielded little in the way of immediate concrete announcements, Putin and Xi signed a slew of agreements on Wednesday on trade, media and energy.\n\nBut there was no apparent breakthrough on a massive new natural gas pipeline, the Power of Siberia 2, that the two sides have been discussing for years.\n\n> ## Moscow keen to press ahead with pipeline\n\nMoscow had signalled ahead of the visit that it was seeking further energy agreements with China, the largest buyer of Russian oil, including pipeline supplies and sea-borne shipments.\n\nThe Russian leader has been weakened over four years of the Ukraine conflict, with his country’s economy shrinking in the first quarter of the year as factors such as wartime spending, labour shortages and sanctions take their toll.\n\nDuring Putin’s last visit in September 2025, Russian gas giant Gazprom said both sides had agreed to move forward with Power of Siberia 2, a 2,600-km pipeline to carry 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia to China via Mongolia.\n\nChina has said very little publicly about the project. While Xi said on Wednesday that cooperation in energy and resource connectivity should be the “ballast stone” in China-Russia relations, he did not mention the pipeline.\n\nKey issues such as gas pricing remain unresolved, and analysts expect negotiations could take years.\n\nThe Kremlin said both sides reached a “general understanding on the parameters” of the project, although no details or clear timeline were agreed.\n\n## Xi wants ‘comprehensive ceasefire’ in Middle East\n\nThe US war on Iran has hampered crude and gas flows, giving an opportunity to Putin to offer Russian energy sources as an alternative.\n\n“Russia and China are actively cooperating in the energy sector… We are, of course, ready to continue reliably supplying all these types of fuel to the rapidly growing Chinese market,” Putin said on Wednesday.\n\nHis priorities may differ from China’s, which wants the Middle East conflict concluded as soon as possible.\n\nUnderlining that, Xi told Putin on Wednesday that “a comprehensive ceasefire is of utmost urgency, resuming hostilities is even more inadvisable and maintaining negotiations is particularly important”.\n\nRussia has sought to capitalise on the energy crisis and rocketing oil prices spurred by the closure of the Hormuz strait.\n\nRussia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov had said after meeting Xi in April that Russia could “compensate” for China’s energy shortages as the Middle East war hits global supplies.\n\n“[China] relies on the freedom of the world’s major waterways to sustain its economic activities, and would prefer that the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz end sooner rather than later,” James Char of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University told _AFP_.\n\n## Honour guard and gun salute\n\nPutin was received by Xi outside Beijing’s opulent Great Hall of the People in much the same fashion as Trump last week, complete with chanting children and military fanfare.\n\n> Opening talks, both were quick to laud their countries’ special ties as they extended their treaty of “friendly cooperation”.\n\nPutin, quoting a Chinese phrase, told Xi: “A day apart feels like three autumns,” adding that relations had reached an “unprecedentedly high level” despite “unfavourable external factors”, Russian media footage showed.\n\nIn an apparent swipe at the United States, Xi warned of “unilateral and hegemonic countercurrents running rampant” in the world.\n\n> Xi said the countries should focus on a long-term strategy and promote a “more just and reasonable” global governance system, according to Chinese state news agency _Xinhua_.\n\n“China-Russia relations have reached this level because we have been able to deepen political mutual trust and strategic cooperation,” Xi said at the start of his meeting with Putin.\n\nPutin said after the talks that Russian-Chinese ties had “reached a truly unprecedented level and continue to develop”.\n\nPutin said their relations were helping ensure global stability and stressed that Russia remained a reliable energy supplier amid Middle East disruption.\n\n“The comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between Russia and China in the new era is an example of international relations in the modern world,” Putin told Xi.\n\nPutin also invited Xi to visit Russia next year.",
  "title": "Xi and Putin unite in criticism of US on nuclear, security issues"
}