China-Russia meeting: Xi Jinping to visit Moscow, Vladimir Putin says

China’s Xi Jinping will visit Russia, Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday as he showcased deepening ties amid fears Beijing might offer material support for the war in Ukraine.

Putin welcomed China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, to the Kremlin and spoke of growing bilateral trade.

“We await a visit of the president of the People’s Republic of China to Russia, we have agreed on this,” Putin told Wang. “Everything is progressing, developing. We are reaching new frontiers.”

Chinese weapons supplies to Russia would threaten a potential escalation of the war into a confrontation between Russia and China on the one side and Ukraine and Nato on the other.

However, Yi said China would “firmly adhere to an objective and impartial position and play a constructive role in the political settlement of the [Ukraine] crisis”, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

Relations between Russia and the west are at their lowest point since the Cold War, and ties between China and the west are also under serious strain.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it welcomed China taking a more active role in efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and said it valued China’s “balanced approach” but that foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yi had not discussed a reported peace plan.

Wang told Putin that relations between the two countries had withstood the pressure from a volatile international situation and that crises offered certain opportunities.

The relationship between China and Russia, Wang said through an interpreter, was not directed against any third party but equally would “not succumb to pressure from third parties” – a clear dig at the United States.

China is Russia’s largest buyer of oil, one of the key sources of revenues for Moscow’s state coffers.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has warned of consequences should China provide material support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

China has pointedly refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine while echoing Moscow’s claim that the US and Nato are to blame for provoking the Kremlin.

The two nations have held a series of military drills that showcased their increasingly close ties. China, Russia and South Africa are holding naval drills in the Indian Ocean this week.

A Russian frigate, the Admiral Gorshkov, arrived in Cape Town in recent days sporting the letters Z and V on its sides, letters that mark Russian weapons on the front lines in Ukraine and are used as a patriotic symbol in Russia.

During a speech at a patriotic concert, Putin on Wednesday hailed Russia’s “heroic” troops and claimed Moscow’s forces were fighting for the country’s “historic frontiers” to protect its “interests, people, culture, language and territory”.

“When we stand together we have no equals,” he shouted to enthusiastic crowds at a Moscow sports arena.