It should come as no surprise that Russian President Vladimir Putin, having skipped the Group of 20 summit hosted by New Delhi in early September, found it necessary to make a rare trip out of his country to attend the third edition of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the other G-20 absentee. The BRI is Mr Xi’s signature initiative, and this year’s meeting also marked the programme’s 10th anniversary. That Mr Xi and Mr Putin spent three hours in bilateral talks when more than a hundred other nations had shown up to attend the forum suggests how tight their relationship has become, of late.

A Chinese read-out of the meeting suggests that Beijing pushed for the early completion of the China-Mongolia-Russia natural gas pipeline project and expressed its desire to align the BRI with the interests of Russia and its fellow members in the Eurasian Economic Union. It also supported Russia’s “security and developmental interests”, which is no surprise, given that the February 2022 summit in Beijing between the two nations had announced a “no-limits partnership” with “no forbidden areas of cooperation”. Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine came days after that summit with Mr Xi.