Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing was unsuccessful. Despite the efforts of the propaganda apparatus to portray the Russian president’s second trip abroad to Kyrgyzstan after his indictment at the Hague Tribunal last March as a symbolic victory over the West, Putin is back in Russia without having signed the desired significant agreements: that was the target for agreements in the energy sector, for the doubling of the Siberian gas pipeline or in agriculture, with the increase in wheat exports (currently China imports only 1.5 percent of its needs), which it instead wanted to tighten.
News published by Tass about a “major wheat contract” worth $25 billion was dismissed by wheat analyst Anrei Sizov as a PR statement from a private company. “All news about this mega-contract comes from Russia. The rest of the world is not in the picture,” he said in an interview with the Moscow Times, in which he reconstructed the actual outcome of Putin’s trip.
On the energy front, it is worth noting the agreement to build the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which Beijing and Moscow have been discussing for years and which is necessary for Moscow to redirect at least some of the 170 billion cubic meters of gas it no longer has for exports to Europe, wasn’t it, it was tight. Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller told Russian television that Russia would soon supply China with the same amount of gas. However, experts point out that this is practically impossible.
“Power of Siberia 2 was presented, still on paper, as a tube with a capacity of 50 billion cubic meters per year. The first operational Power of Siberia has a capacity of 38 billion cubic meters. And there are 10 billion cubic meters.” Contract for deliveries from the Sakhalin fields. In total there are 98, which corresponds to a difference of 73 billion cubic meters compared to pre-war sales in Europe. It remains a mystery how they will manage to close this gap,” explained Sergei Vakulenko, Carnegie analyst. “China doesn’t need to sign a deal now: it has the luxury of waiting and negotiating better terms in the meantime.”
For more than three hours, Putin refused to say what he had spoken about with Xi. However, he decided to devote his press conference to the confrontation with the USA, Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. And he did not answer a journalist’s question about the content of the summit, but limited himself to saying that it was a productive discussion on confidential matters “over a cup of tea.”
“The speech at a forum and the meeting with Xi Jinping served as a reminder of Putin’s status as a world leader. TV channels have been asked to provide detailed coverage of the leader’s trip,” a Kremlin official told The Moscow Times. More than 20 television, radio, news agency and website journalists followed Putin, detailing the president’s every gesture in Beijing and underscoring his role on the international stage. It has been repeated many times that Xi invited Putin to the official lunch for the first time and that the red carpet was rolled out for him, “the enthusiasm that his speech aroused”, as Sergey Lavrov commented, and the number of heads of state present and “the additional tables, which are necessary for the impressive Russian delegation”. But as far as results go, nothing.