Xi and Putin unite in criticism of US, but fail to clinch gas deal

BEIJING: China and Russia condemned US President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defence shield plans and Washington’s “irresponsible” nuclear policy at a joint summit on Wednesday, a week after President Xi Jinping hosted Trump in Beijing.

The joint statement with Russian President Vladimir Putin served to underline that, while Xi seeks stable and constructive relations with Trump, he differs fundamentally with him on key issues where China’s position is closely aligned with Russia’s.



The statement said Trump’s plan for a groundand space-based missile interceptor system threatened global strategic stability and criticised Washington over the expiry of the treaty restricting US and Russian nuclear arsenals. The treaty lapsed in Feb and Trump did not respond to Moscow’s proposal to extend it by a year, after some US politicians argued that Washington needed to grow its arsenal to counter China, which says its build-up is far smaller.

Russia and China also said in a joint declaration that attempts by some countries to dominate global affairs in the spirit of the colonial era had failed but that the world was in danger of a return to the “law of the jungle”. “The global situation is becoming more complex,” they said in a declaration released by the Kremlin in Russian.

Yet while speaking in unison on global security issues, the two presidents failed to reach a breakthrough that Moscow has long been seeking — a contract for a new pipeline that would enable it to more than double the amount of natural gas it sells to China.

Xi and Putin both stressed the closeness of the RussiaChina ties that they sealed in 2022 with the signing of a strategic partnership treaty. Moscow had signalled ahead of the visit that it was seeking further energy agreements with China, the largest buyer of Russian oil. During Putin’s last visit in Sept 2025, Russian gas giant Gazprom said both sides had agreed to move forward with Power of Siberia 2, a prospective 2,600-km pipeline to carry 50 billion cubic metres of gas per year from Russia to China.

China has said very little publicly about the project.

While Xi said on Wednesday that cooperation in energy and resource connectivity should be the “ballast stone” in China-Russia relations, he did not mention the pipeline. Key issues such as gas pricing remain unresolved, and analysts expect negotiations could take years. The Kremlin said both sides had reached a “general understanding on the parameters” of the project, although no details or timeline were agreed. Reuters.