China’s President Xi Jinping will pay an official visit to Russia in early July, Russian Ambassador to China Andrei Denisov said.
But this year’s first meeting between the Chinese and Russian leaders will be held on the sidelines of the One Belt, One Road forum, which will be held in the Chinese capital city on May 14-15. "The dialogue will be obviously continues in early July when China’s President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit Russia," TASS cited him as saying.
The Russian diplomat pointed out that the two countries’ leaders will meet at a BRICS summit in Xiamen. Later on, the Russian and Chinese presidents will meet at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam.
The Russian ambassador pointed out that a number of documents are expected to be signed during Putin’s visit to China.
"A number of documents are ready for signing. But we have not yet decided whether to put them for signing in the presence of the two leaders. In any case, we will have a lot of possibilities to sign such documents," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also plans to attend the forum. Putin will take an active part in the work of the Belt and Road international economic forum in Beijing, according to Denisov.
Speaking on integrating the initiatives of the Belt and Road and the Eurasian Economic Union, Denisov noted that "this is an unprecedented attempt to combine collective plans of economic development on the vast regional space."
He added that the Russian delegation will include several representatives of the Russian government, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The head of the program 'Russia in the Asia-Pacific region' of the Moscow Carnegie Center, Alexander Gabuev, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, said that the visit of the Chinese President to Moscow in July can be described as a working one. "Now there is a scheme when every year the leaders of countries visit each other and the prime ministers of these countries also visit each other the same year. In 2017 it was Xi Jinping's turn to visit Russia and he should do it regardless of the number of other contacts," the expert explained, adding that the visit will be made virtually on the way to Germany for the G20 summit.
According to him, within the framework of the talks in Moscow, a number of previously launched bilateral projects will be widely discussed. "In general, all large projects between Russia and China, which could be easily implemented, have already been put into practice. Only those really difficult left, which implementation requires either changes in the commodity situation, or a complex negotiation process, which cannot be solved by one meeting of the two leaders. I would not expect any serious results from these visits," the head of the program 'Russia in the Asia-Pacific region' warned.
Gabuev clarified that therefore, the trade and economic cooperation would be the priority theme. "There are a number of projects, which are not implemented yet - a heavy helicopter, a wide-body aircraft, financing of the Moscow-Kazan high-speed highway project, the interface of the Silk belt and the Eurasian Economic Union - that is, a whole array of issues that will be discussed," the expert said.
Commenting on Vladimir Putin's participation in the One Belt, One Road forum, he explained that Russia is one of the first large countries to cooperate with Xi Jinping's initiative: a statement on the conjugation of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Project was signed on May 8, 2015. "So far, it has not produced any particularly impressive results, but it is an important symbolic investment in the development of relations," Alexander Gabuev concluded.
