Russian President Vladimir Putin Photo: VCG

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation shows Russia's support to China and the two countries are expected to enhance cooperation during the visit, experts said on Wednesday.
Russian President Putin's visit to China is scheduled for October when China will host the One Belt One Road forum, Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov said on Tuesday, according to Russia's state news agency TASS. 

"We have received an invitation and plan to go to China," Ushakov said.

Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said earlier that one of the topics on the visit's agenda would be bilateral trade and economic cooperation. Apart from that, Moscow and Beijing will exchange views on the current international situation, TASS noted. 

Since 2000, Putin has visited China 17 times. His latest visit was on February 4, 2022, at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games, according to TASS.

Reports of Putin's visit to China within this year started to circulate since early July. Previously, the Kremlin confirmed the arrangement of the visit but did not announce a finalized date. The Kremlin also noted that now was a good time to maintain high dynamics in the development of relations between Russia and China. 

"This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), so October's forum is of vital significance to China. The confirmation of Putin's attendance to the forum and his visit to China during that period showed Russia's support to China in the construction of the BRI," Cui Heng, an assistant research fellow from the Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Chinese experts also noted that the visit demonstrates a growing mutual trust between China and Russia despite Western attempts to sow discord between the two sides, and that the trip is expected to yield more results in multilateral and bilateral pragmatic cooperation.

The two presidents will focus on bilateral trade and economic cooperation and on global issues. In addition to reaching new consensus within the framework of the BRI, there may also be new cooperative projects signed, including the development of the Far East as proposed by Russian experts, as well as cooperation in previously challenging areas such as transportation and agriculture in Siberia, which had faced various obstacles in the past but now the obstacles are now largely removed, experts noted. 

The two countries would also talk about implementing the contents in the joint announcements they issued in March during President Xi Jinping's visit to Russia, Cui noted. 

China and Russia in 2015 signed a joint declaration on cooperation in linking the construction of the BRI and the Eurasian Economic Union, drawing a new blueprint at a strategic level for the development of bilateral relations.

According to Cui, in the past eight years of cooperation under the BRI, the two countries have set good foundations, such as cross-border bridges in the field of infrastructure construction, the completion the China-Europe freight train mechanism and the application of RMB in Russia.

"In the future, the two countries are expected to deepen and enhance their cooperation in the level of industrial chains, such as vehicle and ships manufacturing industries and the chip industry," Cui said.