Last weekend, Russian president Vladimir Putin paid a high-level visit to China. Following the meeting, news emerged that Russian and Chinese companies inked more than 30 cooperation accords in the areas of energy, finance, trade, media and sports. From a PR point of view this is good news for the Kremlin, which is keen to show to the world that it still has powerful friends despite having been shunned by the West.
However, as is more often the case when Russian-Chinese cooperation is concerned, the devil is in the details. Most of the agreements concern framework accords, meaning that concrete cooperation still needs to be finalised.
Well over two years into Putin’s proclaimed “pivot to Asia”, these summits mostly serve as a disguise for underlying difficulties in the bilateral relationship writes Sijbren de Jong in his column for EUobserver. The full article can be read here.
The article also featured in ‘the Morning Vertical’; Radio Free Europe’s daily Russia brief.
Photo credit: World Economic Forum via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
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