The View from Moscow: Putin Carefully Observes the Trump-Xi Summit

The meeting between the American and Chinese presidents comes in a particularly tense bilateral and international context. Although the truce in the trade war waged by the Americans against the Chinese remains in effect, the economic dialogue between the two countries has stalled. Last January, the US intervention in Venezuela, a partner of Beijing, allowed Donald Trump to assert American hegemony over what the new American national security strategy describes as “the western hemisphere”. In the Middle East, the American-Israeli war launched on 28 February against Iran – another partner of Beijing – is disrupting energy prices on the global market and affecting Chinese energy supplies. Faced with the proliferation of American military interventions and the normalization of the use of threats and force by Washington, Moscow and Beijing are staging their political rapprochement, while Sino-Russian trade is flourishing ($61 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up 14.8 percent year-on-year). Vladimir Putin is expected to visit China during the second half of May, immediately after Donald Trump’s visit.