Putin nods to Xi’s ‘concerns,’ and the limits of their cooperation

President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Thursday that China had “questions and concerns” about Russia’s war in Ukraine, a notable, if cryptic, admission that Moscow lacks the full backing of its biggest, most powerful partner on the world stage.
Putin met China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday in their first in-person meeting since Russia invaded Ukraine, and as Xi traveled abroad for the first time since the start of the pandemic. But rather than put on a show of Eurasian unity against the West as Russia struggled to recover from last week’s humiliating military retreat in northeastern Ukraine, the two leaders struck discordant notes in their public remarks — and Xi made no mention of Ukraine at all.
“We highly appreciate the balanced position of our Chinese friends in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said in televised remarks at the start of the meeting. “We understand your questions and concerns in this regard.”
It was a moment, on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekan, that showed the daunting political straits Putin finds himself in nearly seven months into his invasion of Ukraine. On the battlefield, Russia has lost more than 1,000 square miles of territory this month, rendering the prospect of a decisive victory over a Western-armed Ukraine as remote as ever. At home, Putin is facing unusual criticism from some supporters over his slow military progress.
And internationally, as the West continues to ratchet up sanctions against the Kremlin, the Russian president on Thursday saw Xi — who had pledged a friendship with “no limits” just three weeks before Russia invaded — conspicuously withhold any public support for Putin’s war.

Putin tells Xi Jinping that Russia “understands your questions and concerns” about Ukraine. Does that mean… China has some? pic.twitter.com/Zd5XNW7cMD
— max seddon (@maxseddon) September 15, 2022
Instead, in a statement issued after the leaders’ meeting, China said it was “willing to work with Russia to demonstrate the responsibility of a major country, play a leading role and inject stability into a turbulent world.” To scholars who study the between-the-lines messaging of the Chinese government’s public remarks, it sounded like an implicit rebuke.
Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the statement appeared to telegraph “a reproach to the Russians, that they’re not acting like a great power, that they are creating instability.” Shi Yinhong, a longtime professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said it was “the most prudent or most low-key statement in years on Xi’s part on the strategic relationship between the two countries.”
Accentuating the dissonance, even as Xi said nothing on camera about Ukraine, Putin at Thursday’s meeting backed Beijing in its confrontation over Taiwan, where tensions rose last month amid a visit House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to lend support for Taiwan’s resance to pressure from Beijing, which claims the self-ruled island democracy.
Still, China continues to represent a critical lifeline for Russia as Moscow looks for new export and import markets amid the crush of Western sanctions over the war. China has increased its purchases of Russian energy, while selling Russia more cars and some other goods. That support is “very important for Russia,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adding that he believed the Kremlin was “cleareyed” about the limits of China’s backing.

In their first in-person meeting since Russia invaded Ukraine, Xi Jinping offered Vladimir Putin “strong support on core interests” https://t.co/V2U7Ma4sPj pic.twitter.com/SLUOYfTzqK
— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) September 16, 2022
After their one-on-one talks Thursday, Xi and Putin also held a joint meeting with President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh of Mongolia, whose country is in talks about hosting a new natural gas pipeline that would allow Russia to sell more of its Siberian gas to China, rather than to Europe.
A Russian deputy prime miner, Alexander Novak, said Russia was close to reaching a deal to sell 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year to China through the planned pipeline — about the same volume as the capacity of the idle Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russia with Germany. Such a pipeline would, however, require years to complete.
“We see completely eye to eye on the international situation,” Russian Foreign Miner Sergey Lavrov said of the talks between Putin and Xi, describing the meeting as “wonderful.” He pledged that Russian and Chinese officials would coordinate closely at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week.
Although Chinese state media have echoed Russian propaganda in recent months, there is much that China has not done to support Russia in the war and its conflict with the West — confrontations that Putin describes as exential for his country. China appears to have refrained so far this year from shipping weapons to Russia, forcing Moscow to ask Iran and North Korea for military equipment, according to US officials. And it has done little to help Russia circumvent Western sanctions that prevent it from importing advanced Western technology.
President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged on Thursday that China had “questions and concerns” about Russia’s war in Ukraine, a notable, if cryptic, admission that Moscow lacks the full backing of its biggest, most powerful partner on the world stage.
“Access to Western technology, Western markets, Western money is of paramount importance” for China, Gabuev said, explaining why Xi was not prepared to support Russia in ways that could lead to Western sanctions against Beijing.
US officials say that Russia and China see each other as useful in challenging the West, but also that Putin and Xi will only go so far to support the other. Russia is seeking material aid from China for its war efforts, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday at a news conference. But US officials said this week that they have not seen China give any such aid yet.
“What’s striking is Putin’s admission that President Xi has concerns about Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Price said. “It’s not surprising the PRC has such concerns. It is somewhat curious that President Putin would be the one to admit it.”
Radchenko, the professor, said Putin “has severely undercut his leverage with China” cutting himself off from the West. The Chinese government, he said, appeared to see the war as a harmful development, in part because the resulting turmoil in global food and energy markets “created a kind of environment that is not conducive to China’s economic growth.”

China’s President Xi and Russia’s President Putin have held their first meeting since the Ukraine invasion.
Putin told Xi he understands China “concerns” on the war in Ukraine. Beijing and Moscow earlier declared a “no limits” friendship https://t.co/FjLv3btS3i pic.twitter.com/cDDjl1Role
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) September 15, 2022
“Putin is extremely reckless,” Radchenko said. “And he’s willing to take risks that China would not approve of.”
Putin and Xi met on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security-focused organisation that includes China, Russia, India, Pakan and four Central Asian nations. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey also attended and was expected to meet Putin on Friday. Russian state television reminded viewers that the gathered leaders represented more than half the world’s population, a message aimed at rebutting the idea that invading Ukraine had left Putin isolated.
But for Xi, analysts said, the summit was as much about building ties with other countries in the region as it was about seeing Putin. China’s state broadcaster showed videos depicting Xi as being feted with enormous pomp and fanfare upon his arrival in Kazakhstan, where he stopped Wednesday before being greeted an honour guard, dancers and musicians in Uzbekan.
For China, “this is not fundamentally about China-Russia — they’ve spent a lot of time cultivating their neighbours across the border,” said Evan A. Feigenbaum, an Asia special at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Feigenbaum said that while Beijing wants to show diplomatic support for Russia, to counter the US dominance, it will also avoid any moves that might draw sanctions that would further hurt China’s slowing economy. At the same time, he said, China is seeking to offer rhetorical reassurances to former Soviet republics in Central Asia that have been made uneasy the Ukraine war — an invasion that signalled to some that Putin is prepared to use force to try to rebuild the Soviet empire.
Shi, the professor in Beijing, said Xi and Putin have almost certainly been in regular communication for months and know each other well, so it was less important for them to talk than for Xi to speak with Central Asian leaders.
“Talking with Putin after so many online conversations in the past 200 days is far from so important or necessary,” he said, “while Russia’s failure in the present campaign in the field make China’s prudence and military noninvolvement more imperative.”
(Written Anton Troianovski and Keith Bradsher)