They both condemned the American president’s plans for the “Golden Dome” anti-missile shield and Washington’s “irresponsible” nuclear policy, as they described it, in the context of a joint summit with Xi, a week after the president’s meeting with Trump in Beijing.
Golden dome and nuclear weapons in the Putin-Xi joint statement
The joint statement with Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted that while Xi seeks stable and constructive relations with Trump, he fundamentally disagrees with him on critical issues where China’s position closely aligns with Russia’s.
The statement said Trump’s plan for a new missile defense system that extends into space threatens global strategic stability and criticized Washington for ending the nuclear arms control treaty.
The treaty expired in February, and Trump has not responded to Moscow’s proposal to extend it by a year, after some US politicians suggested that the US should further develop its arsenal to counter China, which it says has a much smaller nuclear arsenal.
However, despite appearing united on global security issues, the two sides have failed to make progress on an issue of intense concern to Moscow, none other than the deal on a new natural gas pipeline that would allow Russia to more than double its exports to China.
Xi’s meeting with Putin capped an impressive week of diplomatic contacts that saw him meet both the leader of China’s strongest strategic rival and one of its closest partners.
As Trump seeks an exit from the war with Iran and Putin’s forces remain largely entrenched in Ukraine, the summits gave the Chinese leader a chance to present Beijing as a pillar of global stability and an irreplaceable diplomatic player.
While the meeting with Trump focused mainly on managing tensions, the contact with Putin was of a different nature. The aim was to show progress in a relationship that both sides have already described as “borderless”.
What happened to the Power of Siberia pipeline
Xi and Putin, who have met more than 40 times, re-emphasized the close China-Russia relationship they sealed in 2022 with a strategic partnership agreement, less than three weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow had hinted before the visit that it was seeking new energy deals with China — the biggest buyer of Russian oil — including supplies by pipeline as well as by sea.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said China was interested in long-term supplies of Russian oil and an increase in volumes, which he said had risen by 10 percent in four months.
During Putin’s last visit in September 2025, Russian gas company Gazprom announced that the two sides had agreed to go ahead with the “Power of Siberia 2” project, a 2,600-kilometer pipeline planned to carry 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to China via Mongolia. China has made little public reference to the project. Although Xi said cooperation in energy and resource-linking infrastructure should be the “cornerstone” of China-Russia relations, he made no mention of the pipeline.
Critical issues such as natural gas pricing remain unresolved and analysts estimate that negotiations could take years.
The Kremlin said the two sides had reached a “broad understanding on the parameters” of the project, but no details or clear timetable had been agreed upon. Novak said Russia and China are finalizing contracts for supplies through the pipeline.
China’s goals and the quality of bilateral relations
Xi said the two countries should focus on long-term strategy and promote a “fairer and more reasonable” global governance system, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
“China-Russia relations have reached this level because we have succeeded in deepening political mutual trust and strategic cooperation,” Xi said.
Putin, after the talks, said that Russian-Chinese relations have reached a “truly unprecedented level and continue to develop.”
The two sides signed a declaration on strengthening overall strategic coordination and a joint declaration in favor of a multipolar world system.
The joint statement stressed that “the global peace and development agenda faces new risks and challenges, with the risk of fragmenting the international community and returning to a ‘jungle’ in international relations,” according to the Kremlin. According to the statement: “The US and Israeli military attacks on Iran are illegal, they undermine stability. Attempts by certain states to unilaterally manage world affairs, to impose their interests on the whole world and to limit the dominant development of other countries, in the spirit of colonialism, have failed.
