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When Was the Last Time Putin Visited the U.S?

Since Vladimir Putin 's inauguration as president on May 7, 2000, five U.S. presidents have been in the White House, but not all have had a meeting with their Russian counterpart on American soil. The last such encounter occurred more than seven years ago.

Putin has made a total of seven American visits as president, according to the State Department's Office of the Historian. His first trip took place on September 6 and 7, 2000, when he met then-President Bill Clinton at the Millennium Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Putin's last visit to the U.S. was in 2015.

Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine this year may have caused relations between Moscow and Washington to descend to an all-time low, but there have been some seemingly cordial moments between the heads of state.

Between November 12 and 15, 2001, Putin went to Washington, D.C, and visited Ground Zero in New York City. He also stayed in Crawford, a small rural town in central Texas where Bush owned a ranch nearby. They paid a visit to Crawford High School where Bush said the pair had enjoyed some "Texas barbecue and pecan pie," NPR reported.

Putin met Bush again nearly two years later at the 58th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2003. The Russian leader also went to the presidential retreat at Camp David, in Maryland.

Putin's fourth visit to the U.S. occurred between June 8 to 11, 2004, for the G8 meeting of the world's biggest economies and also to attend the funeral of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

In September the following year, the Russian leader was stateside again, this time for the UN General Assembly, the 2005 World Summit. That time, he also paid a visit to Bayonne, New Jersey, to unveil a memorial to the 9/11 terror attacks.

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Putin had offered his full support to Bush in the wake of 9/11, and his successor Barack Obama also initially tried to forge strong ties when he came into office.

But ties between the Russian and American presidents have waxed and waned, said William Muck , professor of political science, North Central College, in Naperville, Illinois.

"The relationship between Vladimir Putin and the five post-Cold War presidents has ranged from cautious optimism to frosty mistrust, to even open admiration during the Trump presidency," he told Newsweek .

"At no point were any of these relationships particularly warm, yet early in his tenure Putin was more careful about not alienating U.S. presidents," he added.

During a visit in July 2007, Putin was again on Bush's home turf as a guest at the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where, according to CBS News, he enjoyed local seafood and blueberries and took a speedboat ride with the president and his father, George H.W. Bush .

In 2008, Putin had to stand aside as president in keeping with the Russian constitution, which restricted him to two consecutive terms. Dmitry Medvedev took over as head of state and Putin became prime minister. The constitution has since been changed

In his four years as head of government, Putin did not make any official visits to the U.S., according to the Office of the Historian, though during that period, Medvedev did make seven American trips.

Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 but it was three years before he came to the U.S. again. In his last known visit to American soil, he spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on September 28, 2015, on a trip in which he met with then-President Barack Obama.

"The negative relationship between Putin and U.S. presidents stands in stark contrast to the deep and meaningful relationship that Bill Clinton built with Boris Yeltsin and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan developed with Mikhail Gorbachev," Muck said, referring to the Russian leader's predecessors.

While Putin had highly publicized meetings with Donald Trump when the latter was president, and their relationship was the focus of scrutiny, no meeting took place on American soil.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

About the writer

Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular the war started by Moscow. He also covers other areas of geopolitics including China. 

Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English, knows Russian and French.

You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing [email protected] or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole.

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

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Talks underway for Putin visit to Washington, White House says

Press secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday that discussions were underway for Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Washington, D.C. in the fall.

The announcement came days after President Donald Trump faced a bipartisan backlash for his widely criticized comments immediately following his first meeting with the Russian leader.

"In Helsinki, @POTUS agreed to ongoing working level dialogue between the two security council staffs President Trump asked @Ambjohnbolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway," Sanders said in a tweet .

The statement followed the president's indication earlier Thursday that a follow-up session was in the works.

"The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media," he tweeted. "I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed..." Among the long list of issues he said he and Putin had spoken about: terrorism, nuclear proliferation, "cyber attacks," trade, Ukraine, Israeli security and Middle East peace, and North Korea.

"There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems...but they can ALL be solved!" he added.

Trump asked Ambassador John Bolton on Thursday to invite Putin to Washington in the fall to follow up on and review the two sides’ progress on the issues they discussed in Helsinki, according to a national security spokesperson.

The president previously said in March after his call with Putin that the two leaders discussed a potential bilateral meeting in Washington.

The spokesman said the second meeting will address the national security issues the two discussed in Helsinki, including Russian meddling, nuclear proliferation, North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Putin has visited the United States seven times as Russian leader, according to the State Department : He met once each with Presidents Clinton and Obama during U.N. sessions in New York, and five times with President George W. Bush, including visits to the White House and Camp David.

The announcement that Putin was in talks to visit Washington again comes amid special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and heightened scrutiny of Trump's views on Russian relations following the Helsinki summit.

The president came under widespread criticism on Monday for not backing his intelligence community's assessment that Moscow had interfered in the presidential election and blamed America for the deteriorating relations with Russia.

In the following days, Trump attempted to quell the backlash. On Tuesday, Trump said he had misspoken when he said he did not see a reason why it would have been Russia that meddled, and had actually intended to make the opposite statement.

Then on Wednesday, Sanders had to again state that the president agreed with the assessment of the intelligence community about Russian interference, saying that when the president said "no" before following a question about Russian election interference with a response about the U.S. relationship with that country, he was actually indicating that he was not going to respond to questions from reporters.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, told by NBC's Andrea Mitchell at the Aspen Security Forum of the White House announcement that a Putin visit was in the works, first laughingly asked her to repeat the news, then responded: "Okay. That's gonna be special."

How America Lost Vladimir Putin

A rupture between Russia and the West, 14 years in the making

In September 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vladimir Putin supported Washington's imminent invasion of Afghanistan in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War. He agreed that U.S. planes carrying humanitarian aid could fly through Russian air space. He said the U.S. military could use airbases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And he ordered his generals to brief their U.S. counterparts on their own ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.

During Putin's visit to President George W. Bush's Texas ranch two months later, the U.S. leader, speaking at a local high school, declared his Russian counterpart "a new style of leader, a reformer … a man who's going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States."

For a moment, it seemed, the distrust and antipathy of the Cold War were fading. Then, just weeks later, Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that it could build a system in Eastern Europe to protect NATO allies and U.S. bases from Iranian missile attack. In a nationally televised address, Putin warned that the move would undermine arms control and nonproliferation efforts.

"This step has not come as a surprise to us," Putin said. "But we believe this decision to be mistaken." The sequence of events early in Washington's relationship with Putin reflects a dynamic that has persisted through the ensuing 14 years and the current crisis in Ukraine: U.S. actions, some intentional and some not, sparking an overreaction from an aggrieved Putin.

As Russia masses tens of thousands of troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border, Putin is thwarting what the Kremlin says is an American plot to surround Russia with hostile neighbors. Experts said he is also promoting "Putinism"—a conservative, ultra-nationalist form of state capitalism—as a global alternative to Western democracy.

It's also a dynamic that some current and former U.S. officials said reflects an American failure to recognize that while the Soviet Union is gone as an ideological enemy, Russia has remained a major power that demands the same level of foreign-policy attention as China and other large nations—a relationship that should not just be a means to other ends, but an end in itself.

"I just don't think we were really paying attention," said James F. Collins, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in the late 1990s. The bilateral relationship "was seen as not a big deal."

Putin was never going to be an easy partner. He is a Russian nationalist with authoritarian tendencies who, like his Russian predecessors for centuries, harbors a deep distrust of the West, according to senior U.S. officials. Much of his worldview was formed as a KGB officer in the twilight years of the Cold War and as a government official in the chaotic post-Soviet Russia of the 1990s, which Putin and many other Russians view as a period when the United States repeatedly took advantage of Russian weakness.

Since becoming Russia's president in 2000, Putin has made restoring Russia's strength—and its traditional sphere of influence—his central goal. He has also cemented his hold on power, systematically quashed dissent, and used Russia's energy supplies as an economic billy club against its neighbors. Aided by high oil prices and Russia's United Nations Security Council veto, Putin has perfected the art of needling American presidents, at times obstructing U.S. policies.

Officials from the administrations of Presidents Bush and Barack Obama said American officials initially overestimated their potential areas of cooperation with Putin. Then, through a combination of overconfidence, inattention, and occasional clumsiness, Washington contributed to a deep spiral in relations with Moscow.

Bush and Putin's post-2001 camaraderie foundered on a core dispute: Russia's relationship with its neighbors. In November 2002, Bush backed NATO's invitation to seven nations—including former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—to begin talks to join the Western alliance. In 2004, with Bush as a driving force, the seven Eastern European nations joined NATO.

Putin and other Russian officials asked why NATO continued to grow when the enemy it was created to fight, the Soviet Union, had ceased to exist. And they asked what NATO expansion would do to counter new dangers, such as terrorism and proliferation. "This purely mechanical expansion does not let us face the current threats," Putin said, "and cannot allow us to prevent such things as the terrorist attacks in Madrid or restore stability in Afghanistan."

Thomas E. Graham, who served as Bush's senior director for Russia on the National Security Council, said a larger effort should have been made to create a new post-Soviet, European security structure that replaced NATO and included Russia. "What we should have been aiming for—and what we should be aiming for at this point," Graham said, "is a security structure that's based on three pillars: the United States, a more or less unified Europe, and Russia."

Graham said small, incremental attempts to test Russian intentions in the early 2000s in Afghanistan, for example, would have been low-risk ways to gauge Putin's sincerity. "We never tested Putin," Graham said. "Our policy never tested Putin to see whether he was really committed to a different type of relationship."

But Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator John McCain, and other conservatives, as well as hawkish Democrats, remained suspicious of Russia and eager to expand NATO. They argued that Moscow should not be given veto power over which nations could join the alliance, and that no American president should rebuff demands from Eastern European nations to escape Russian dominance.

Another core dispute between Bush and Putin related to democracy. What Bush and other American officials saw as democracy spreading across the former Soviet bloc, Putin saw as pro-American regime change. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, without UN authorization and over the objections of France, Germany, and Russia, was a turning point for Putin. He said the war made a mockery of American claims of promoting democracy abroad and upholding international law.

Putin was also deeply skeptical of U.S. efforts to nurture democracy in the former Soviet bloc, where the State Department and American nonprofit groups provided training and funds to local civil-society groups. In public speeches, he accused the United States of meddling.

In late 2003, street protests in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, known as the Rose Revolution, led to the election of a pro-Western leader. Four months later, street protests in Ukraine that became known as the Orange Revolution resulted in a pro-Western president taking office there. Putin saw both developments as American-backed plots and slaps in the face, so soon after his assistance in Afghanistan, according to senior U.S. officials.

In 2006, Bush and Putin's sparring over democracy intensified. In a press conference at the first G-8 summit hosted by Russia, the two presidents had a testy exchange. Bush said that the United States was promoting freedom in Iraq, which was engulfed in violence. Putin openly mocked him.

"We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq," Putin said, smiling as the audience erupted into laughter, "I will tell you quite honestly." Bush tried to laugh off the remark. "Just wait," he replied, referring to Iraq.

Graham said the Bush administration telegraphed in small but telling ways that other foreign countries, particularly Iraq, took precedence over the bilateral relationship with Moscow. In 2006, for example, the White House asked the Kremlin for permission for Bush to make a refueling stop in Moscow on his way to an Asia-Pacific summit meeting. But it made clear that Bush was not looking to meet with Putin, whom he would see on the sidelines of the summit.

After Russian diplomats complained, Graham was sent to Moscow to determine if Putin really wanted a meeting and to make clear that if there was one, it would be substance-free. In the end, the two presidents met and agreed to ask their underlings to work on a nonproliferation package. "When the Russian team came to Washington in December 2006, in a fairly high-level ... group, we didn't have anything to offer," Graham said. "We hadn't had any time to think about it. We were still focused on Iraq."

Graham said that the Bush administration's approach slighted Moscow. "We missed some opportunities in the Bush administration's initial years to put this on a different track," Graham said. "And then later on, some of our actions, intentional or not, sent a clear message to Moscow that we didn't care."

Bush's relationship with Putin unraveled in 2008. In February, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia with the support of the United States—a step that Russia, a longtime supporter of Serbia, had been trying to block diplomatically for more than a decade. In April, Bush won support at a NATO summit in Bucharest for the construction of a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe.

Bush called on NATO to give Ukraine and Georgia a so-called Membership Action Plan, a formal process that would put each on a path toward eventually joining the alliance. France and Germany blocked him and warned that further NATO expansion would spur an aggressive Russian stance when Moscow regained power. In the end, the alliance simply issued a statement saying the two countries "will become members of NATO." That compromise risked the worst of both worlds—antagonizing Moscow without giving Kiev and Tbilisi a roadmap to join NATO.

The senior U.S. official said these steps amounted to "three train wrecks" from Putin's point of view, exacerbating the Russian leader's sense of victimization. "Doing all three of those things in kind of close proximity—Kosovo independence, missile defense and the NATO expansion decisions—sort of fed his sense of people trying to take advantage of Russia," he said.

In August 2008, Putin struck back. After Georgia launched an offensive to regain control of the breakaway, pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, Putin launched a military operation that expanded Russian control of South Ossetia and a second breakaway area, Abkhazia. The Bush administration, tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, publicly protested but declined to intervene militarily in Georgia. Putin emerged as the clear winner and achieved his goal of standing up to the West.

After his 2008 election victory, Barack Obama carried out a sweeping review of Russia policy. Its primary architect was Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor and vocal proponent of greater democracy in Russia who took the National Security Council position previously held by Thomas Graham.

In a recent interview, McFaul said that when Obama's new national security team surveyed the administration's primary foreign-policy objectives, they found that few involved Russia. Only one directly related to bilateral relations with Moscow: a new nuclear-arms-reduction treaty. The result, McFaul said, was that relations with Moscow were seen as important in terms of achieving other foreign-policy goals, and not as important in terms of Russia itself. "So that was our approach," he said. Obama's new Russia strategy was called "the reset." In July 2009, he traveled to Moscow to start implementing it.

In an interview with the Associated Press a few days before leaving Washington, Obama chided Putin, who had become Russia's prime minister in 2008 after reaching his two-term constitutional limit as president. Obama said the United States was developing a "very good relationship" with the man Putin had anointed as his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and accused Putin of using "Cold War approaches" to relations with Washington.

"I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new," Obama said. In Moscow, Obama spent five hours meeting with Medvedev and only one hour meeting with Putin, who was still widely seen as the country's real power. After their meeting, Putin said U.S.-Russian relations had gone through various stages. "There were periods when our relations flourished quite a bit and there were also periods of, shall we say, grayish mood between our two countries and of stagnation," he said, as Obama sat a few feet away.

At first, the reset fared well. During Obama's visit, Moscow agreed to greatly expand Washington's ability to ship military supplies to Afghanistan via Russia. In April 2010, the United States and Russia signed a new START treaty, further reducing the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Later that year, Russia supported sweeping new UN economic sanctions on Iran and blocked the sale of sophisticated, Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Tehran.

Experts said the two-year honeymoon was the result of the Obama administration's engaging Russia on issues where the two countries shared interests, such as reducing nuclear arms, countering terrorism, and nonproliferation. The same core issues that sparked tensions during the Bush administration—democracy and Russia's neighbors—largely went unaddressed.

In 2011, Putin accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of secretly organizing street demonstrations after disputed Russian parliamentary elections. Putin said Clinton had encouraged "mercenary" Kremlin foes. And he claimed that foreign governments had provided "hundreds of millions" of dollars to Russian opposition groups.

"She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work," Putin said. McFaul called that a gross exaggeration. He said the U.S. government and American nonprofit groups in total have provided tens of millions of dollars in support to civil-society groups in Russia and former Soviet bloc countries since 1989.

In 2012, Putin was elected to a third term as president and launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent and re-centralization of power. McFaul, then the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, publicly criticized the moves in speeches and Twitter posts.

In the interview, McFaul blamed Putin for the collapse in relations. He said the Russian leader rebuffed repeated invitations to visit Washington when he was prime minister and declined to attend a G-8 meeting in Washington after he again became president. Echoing Bush-era officials, McFaul said it was politically impossible for an American president to trade Russian cooperation on Iran, for example, for U.S. silence on democracy in Russia and Moscow's pressuring of its neighbors.

"We're not going to do it if it means trading partnerships or interests with our partners or allies in the region," McFaul said. "And we're not going to do it if it means trading our speaking about democracy and human rights." Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that clashes over democracy ended any hopes of U.S.-Russian rapprochement, as they had in the Bush administration. "That fight basically vaporizes the relationship," said Weiss.

In 2013, U.S.-Russian relations plummeted. In June, Putin granted asylum to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Obama, in turn, canceled a planned summit meeting with Putin in Moscow that fall. It was the first time a U.S. summit with the Kremlin had been canceled in 50 years.

Last fall, demonstrators in Kiev began demanding that Ukraine move closer to the European Union. At the time, the Obama White House was deeply skeptical of Putin and paying little attention to the former Soviet bloc, according to Weiss. White House officials had come to see Russia as a foreign-policy dead end, not a source of potential successes.

Deferring to European officials, the Obama administration backed a plan that would have moved Ukraine closer to the EU and away from a pro-Russian economic bloc created by Putin. Critics said it was a mistake to make Ukraine choose sides. Jack F. Matlock, who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 1987 to 1991, said that years of escalating protests by Putin made it clear he believed the West was surrounding him with hostile neighbors. And for centuries, Russian leaders have viewed a friendly Ukraine as vital to Moscow's defense.

"The real red line has always been Ukraine," Matlock said. "When you begin to poke them in the most sensitive area, unnecessarily, about their security, you are going to get a reaction that makes them a lot less cooperative." American experts said it was vital for the U.S. to establish a new long-term strategy toward Russia that does not blame the current crisis solely on Putin. Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Wilson Center, argued that demonizing Putin reflected the continued failure of American officials to recognize Russia's power, interest, and importance.

"Putin is a reflection of Russia," Rojansky said. "This weird notion that Putin will go away and there will suddenly be a pliant Russia is false." A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, called for a long-term strategy that exploits the multiple advantages the U.S. and Europe enjoy over Putin's Russia.

"I would much rather be playing our hand than his over the longer term," the official said. "Because he has a number of, I think, pretty serious strategic disadvantages—a one-dimensional economy, a political system and a political elite that's pretty rotten through corruption."

Matlock, the former U.S. ambassador, said it was vital for Washington and Moscow to end a destructive pattern of careless American action followed by Russian overreaction. "So many of the problems in our relationship really relate, I would say, to what I'd call inconsiderate American actions," Matlock said. "Many of them were not meant to be damaging to Russia.… But the Russian interpretation often exaggerated the degree of hostility and overreacted."

This post originally appeared on Reuters.com, an Atlantic partner site.

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Russia-Ukraine War As Xi and Putin Meet, U.S. Assails ‘Diplomatic Cover’ for Crimes

Three days after the International Criminal Court accused President Vladimir Putin of Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, President Xi Jinping of China arrived in Moscow for a state visit.

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Anton Troianovski ,  Valerie Hopkins and Carly Olson

Here’s what to know about Xi’s visit to Russia.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met face-to-face on Monday in Moscow, where Mr. Xi hailed the two nations as “good neighbors and reliable partners” during a state visit that has been closely watched by Kyiv and its Western allies.

While Chinese officials have attempted to cast Mr. Xi as a mediator who can broker a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, officials in the United States have been wary of China’s involvement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who previously warned that Beijing could provide weapons to Russia, said on Monday that the visit amounted to “diplomatic cover” for Russian war crimes.

Three days after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest, the Russian leader hosted Mr. Xi for more than four hours at the Kremlin. According to a summary of their meeting from Xinhua, China’s official news agency, Mr. Xi said his country was “willing to continue playing a constructive role in promoting a political settlement of the Ukraine issue.”

Kyiv and its allies have brushed off the Chinese proposal. Mr. Blinken said on Monday that any plan that did not include the removal of Russian forces from Ukraine “would recognize Russia’s attempts to seize a sovereign neighbor’s territory by force.”

Here are the latest developments:

Ukrainian officials made clear on Monday that they considered the idea of peace talks at the moment to be preposterous . “The first and main point is the capitulation or withdrawal of the Russian occupation troops,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in a statement.

In Brussels, European Union defense and foreign ministers agreed to a plan to provide Ukraine with more artillery ammunition , which is badly needed as Kyiv prepares for an expected counteroffensive in the spring.

John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said there is no certainty about whether China will send arms to Russia as part of an alliance he called a “marriage of convenience.” Arming the Russian military, he added, would run counter to Mr. Xi’s public pronouncements that the Chinese wanted a “peaceful” end to the invasion.

Before hosting China’s leader, Mr. Putin made a point of showing that he was in control , traveling to Russian occupied territory of Ukraine for the first time since the invasion began. He made weekend visits to Crimea and the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which Russia captured after largely destroying it last year.

Carly Olson and Ivan Nechepurenko

Ukraine says an explosion in Crimea destroyed Russian cruise missiles.

An explosion hit the town of Dzhankoi in Russian-occupied Crimea on Monday, and Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said the blast had destroyed Russian Kalibr cruise missiles that were being transported by rail.

Kremlin-appointed authorities in Crimea denied the claim, saying that drones, which had been responsible for the blast, were “aimed at civilian objects.”

“One was shot down over the Dzhankoi technical school and fell between the academic building and the dormitory,” Oleg Kryuchkov, adviser to the Russia-appointed head of Crimea wrote on the social messaging app Telegram. “There were no military facilities nearby.”

Sergei Aksyonov, the Kremlin-installed leader of Crimea, said that debris from the explosion had damaged a house and a shop, leaving one person injured.

Dzhankoi, a logistics node in northern Crimea and home to an important Russian airfield, is about 150 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine and is a strategically vulnerable point for Russian forces. Weapons and supplies for Russian forces travel along a railway that runs through the town and links up with the Kerch Strait bridge that connects the peninsula with the Russian mainland. That bridge was damaged in an attack last fall .

The Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia illegally seized in 2014, is a crucial military base and staging ground for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian warships in the Black Sea have fired cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets that are sometimes hundreds of miles away, hitting towns and cities and damaging the country’s energy infrastructure.

After a major Russian barrage against Ukraine last December, Moscow’s Defense Ministry released a picture showing a cruise missile and a message: “Kalibrs will never run out.”

Ukraine’s military did not claim responsibility for the explosion in Dzhankoi. Although the government has not acknowledged it publicly, Ukraine has struck repeatedly at military targets in Crimea and other Russian-occupied territory, and at infrastructure such as the Kerch Strait bridge.

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Chris Buckley

A Chinese summary of the Xi-Putin meeting doesn’t suggest any breakthroughs.

Talks in Moscow on Monday between President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir V. Putin covered their plans to strengthen bilateral relations and also the war in Ukraine, according to an official Chinese summary of the meeting that gave no sign that any breakthrough had been reached over the fighting.

Citing the broadly worded framework for peace talks that China issued last month, Mr. Xi told his Russian counterpart that such negotiations were the only viable way of ending the yearlong war, according to a summary of their meeting released by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

“The majority of countries support easing tensions, advocate peace negotiations and oppose pouring oil on the fire,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin, according to the Chinese summary. “Historically, conflicts must finally be settled through dialogue and negotiations.”

Mr. Putin said he had studied China’s document calling for peace talks and was open to negotiations, according to the summary. But it gave no signs that Mr. Putin had in mind any of the concessions that Ukraine has said must be a precondition for talks, including the withdrawal of Russian troops. Ukraine has also ruled out giving up territory in exchange for peace.

The two leaders have met about 40 times for official talks since Mr. Xi became China’s leader in 2012. And regardless of the continued fighting in Ukraine, Mr. Xi made it clear that he remained committed to building a strong relationship with Russia — and with Mr. Putin — as an invaluable partner in countering American global influence.

“Consolidating and developing Chinese-Russian relations is a strategic choice that China has made in the light of its own fundamental interests and the broad trends of global development,” Mr. Xi said.

Mr. X’s trip to Russia was his first state trip since he started his unprecedented third term as president this month, and Russia was his first foreign visit after he first became president a decade ago. He effectively endorsed yet another term for Mr. Putin, with a presidential election set for next year — although Mr. Putin has not announced his candidacy, and a Kremlin spokesman had denied that Mr. Xi had any inside information.

“I’m sure that the Russian people will certainly continue firmly supporting you,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin, according to Xinhua.

Carly Olson

The nightly address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky focused on the European agreement to provide Ukraine's forces with more artillery ammunition and the $350 million U.S. military aid package announced today. He did not mention China at all.

Christopher Buckley

China says that Xi and Putin discussed Ukraine in talks on Monday, but the summary of their meeting from Xinhua, China’s official news agency, gave no signs of a breakthrough. “China is willing to continue playing a constructive role in promoting a political settlement of the Ukraine issue,” Xi told Putin, according to the summary.

Xi added that he was “sure that the Russian people will certainly continue firmly supporting you,” according to Xinhua.

Elian Peltier

Xi condemns killings in a part of Africa where Russian and Chinese interests are competing.

Shortly before landing in Moscow on Monday, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, condemned the killing of nine Chinese nationals a day earlier at a gold mine in the Central African Republic, where tensions have flared between Chinese and Russian interests.

Among competing claims about who was responsible — including one that blamed the Kremlin-backed Wagner mercenary group — Mr. Xi urged the authorities of the Central African Republic to bring the perpetrators to justice, according to a statement released by the Chinese foreign ministry. The ministry said two other Chinese nationals had been “severely injured” and called on its citizens to leave other areas of the country for the capital, Bangui, the only place there it does not consider high-risk.

The state prosecutor’s office told the Agence-France Presse news agency on Monday that an investigation had been opened into the killing.

At least one local official blamed a rebel group for the killings, which occurred early Sunday, when masked assailants attacked a mining site run by a Chinese firm. But the Coalition of Patriots for Change, an alliance of rebel groups trying to oust the pro-Kremlin president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, denied any involvement and instead blamed Wagner, the fighting force founded by an oligarch close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which is also fighting in Ukraine.

Two Western officials based in Bangui said that while the killings might have been carried out by rebels, it was also likely that Wagner operatives were behind them.

Russian mercenaries have been operating since 2018 in the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries despite its vast reserves of gold and diamonds, which has been plagued by bitter internal conflict since 2013. Although Wagner operatives have helped the country’s military regain control of most of the country, they have done so at the expense of widespread abuses against civilians .

From beer to gold to timber, they have also extended their grip on the country’s economy.

There has been increased friction in recent months between Chinese companies that obtained mining concessions in the center of the country and companies affiliated with the Wagner group, which controls a sprawling gold mine nearby called Ndassima.

The Western officials, both speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media, said that Wagner operatives had brought back the bodies of the nine Chinese nationals to Bangui. The nine men were shot, which the officials said did not correspond to methods employed by the rebel groups.

One of the officials said the C.P.C. had kidnapped at least one Chinese national for money over the past year. “They go for ransoms and the Chinese government pays,” the official said about the rebels. “But they don’t kill.”

A C.P.C. spokesman, Aboubakar Siddick Ali, said in a telephone interview that the killing bore the methods of the Wagner group. According to one of the Western officials, the victims were shot at close range.

“They want to put the blame on the C.P.C., but our goal isn’t to assassinate the Chinese,” the spokesman said, stressing that the group was focused on toppling Mr. Touadéra’s government.

In a statement, Evariste Ngamana, the vice president of the Central African Republic’s national assembly, accused “foreign mercenaries” affiliated with powers that “for centuries exercised violence in our country” of being behind the killing. But the statement from Mr. Ngamana, a politician known to be close to Russia, appeared to be a veiled reference to France, the former colonial power that until last year had troops positioned in the Central African Republic.

Katie Rogers and Edward Wong

There is no certainty that China will send arms to Russia, the White House says.

U.S. officials are not certain that Beijing will provide weapons to Moscow to further the Russian invasion of Ukraine, John Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Monday, weeks after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had warned of the possibility.

Mr. Kirby’s statement came as the leaders of China and Russia met in Moscow amid concern that China could decide to abandon its peacemaker stance on the invasion of Ukraine and arm Russia’s military.

“We’ll see what they come out of this meeting talking about,” Mr. Kirby said. “I mean, we don’t know if there’s going to be some sort of arrangement. I would just tell you that we still don’t believe that China has taken it off the table. We still don’t believe and haven’t seen any indication that they’re moving in that direction.”

Mr. Kirby, seeking to downplay the significance of the Moscow meeting, called the Russian-Chinese alliance a “marriage of convenience” and referred to Russia as the “junior partner” in the relationship. He also said that arming the Russian military would run counter to President Xi Jinping’s public pronouncements that the Chinese wanted a “peaceful” end to the invasion.

In February, Mr. Blinken indicated that he had evidence that, behind the scenes, Beijing was tilting toward stronger support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and “considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine.”

Such a step would be a major shift for China, which has defended its broader economic, energy and political ties with Moscow but not supplied it with weapons, ammunition or other battlefield equipment for the invasion. Mr. Blinken said he had warned his Chinese counterpart that there would be serious consequences were that to occur.

On Monday, Mr. Kirby said that the president wanted to have another conversation with Mr. Xi, but that it would come at the “most appropriate time.”

Ivan Nechepurenko

The meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin lasted more than four hours, Russian news agencies reported. The two leaders also shared dinner before Mr. Putin walked Mr. Xi to his Chinese state limousine. The agenda for Tuesday includes a series of meetings with other officials from both countries, plus a grand dinner in one of the Kremlin's ceremonial halls.

Katie Rogers

John Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Monday that U.S. officials were not certain that Beijing would provide weapons to Moscow to further its invasion of Ukraine. “We’ll see what they come out of this meeting talking about,” he said of talks between China's leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Kirby said that President Biden wanted to have another conversation with Xi, but that it would come at the “most appropriate time.”

Tyler Hicks

Ukrainian soldiers from the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade defending the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Monday, firing rocket-propelled grenades and wielding machine guns in trenches against Russian invaders.

The White House authorizes $350 million in military aid for Ukraine.

The Biden administration on Monday approved a new $350 million package of military aid for Ukraine, U.S. officials said, a critical injection as Ukraine grapples with ammunition shortages and gears up for a spring offensive.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement that the aid package would include more ammunition for howitzers and HIMARS rocket launchers — the American-made truck mounted rocket system — in addition to “ammunition for Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, HARM missiles, anti-tank weapons, riverine boats, and other equipment.”

This additional drawdown of military equipment from the Pentagon’s stockpiles is the 34th since last August, the Defense Department said in a statement. “To meet Ukraine’s evolving battlefield requirements, the United States will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities,” the statement added.

The Biden administration has authorized drawdowns valued at approximately $19.95 billion since August 2021. In total, the United States. has committed more than $32.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning the war, according to the Defense Department .

Ammunition shortages are of particular concern for Ukraine’s military, which is using artillery shells faster than its Western allies can produce and supply them. This has, at times, led to firing far fewer artillery shells than they otherwise would .

Ukrainian troops have burned through equipment in Bakhmut, a city in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that has been devastated by a grueling, monthslong battle. The military is using thousands of artillery shells a day as it tries to hold the city.

European Union foreign and defense ministers, too, on Monday agreed to spend up to 2 billion euros , or $2.14 billion, to provide Ukraine with artillery shells, ramp up Europe’s ammunition production and replenish their own national stocks. The details of the agreement are not yet finalized.

Michael Crowley

Blinken says Xi’s visit amounts to ‘diplomatic cover’ for Russia’s war crimes.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Monday said that the visit to Moscow by China’s president days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, amounts to Beijing providing “diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit” war crimes.

President Xi Jinping’s visit “suggests that China feels no responsibility to hold the president accountable for the atrocities committed in Ukraine,” Mr. Blinken said of Mr. Putin.

Mr. Blinken made the remark during a longer criticism of the role China has sought to take in the war by offering a vague plan for peace talks that Kyiv and its Western allies have brushed off. He warned against any efforts to settle the conflict that might lead to an “unjust outcome” or offer Russia a chance to gain a tactical advantage in the fighting.

The briefing by Mr. Blinken in Washington was to mark the release of the State Department’s annual report on global human rights , which harshly condemned Russian forces for a litany of atrocities in Ukraine, including “credible reports of summary execution, torture, rape and indiscriminate attacks,” including ones targeting civilians.

The report also found that Russia’s government “engaged in the forced deportation of civilians from Ukraine to Russia,” including children — the subject of the charges against Mr. Putin that the international court announced on Friday.

The department also noted serious human rights problems within Ukraine, including arbitrary arrests and killings and inadequate steps to punish officials who committed misdeeds. But the report said the issues there were “not comparable to the scope of Russia’s abuses.”

Mr. Blinken said he expected China to use Mr. Xi’s trip to reiterate its past calls for a cease-fire under the 12-point peace proposal that China presented last month . But he expressed deep skepticism about the Chinese efforts, saying that a call for a cease-fire that does not include the removal of Russian forces from Ukraine “would effectively be supporting the ratification of Russian conquest,” he said. “It would recognize Russia’s attempts to seize a sovereign neighbor’s territory by force.”

He said that the U.S. would welcome any peace initiative for Ukraine “that advances a just and durable peace,” and supports elements of China’s proposal, including the protection of civilians and ensuring nuclear safety.

But the fundamental element of any plan to end the fighting must be “upholding the sovereignty and territory of Ukraine,” he said, adding, “Any plan that does not prioritize this critical principle is a stalling tactic at best, or is merely seeking to facilitate an unjust outcome.”

He said that Mr. Putin’s efforts to annex Ukrainian territory and his military’s ongoing attacks on civilians prove that Mr. Putin “has no interest” in such a peace.

Anton Troianovski

Xi refrains from mentioning Ukraine in Moscow, instead focusing on generalities.

When he welcomed Xi Jinping to the Kremlin on Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin pledged that Russia would study the Chinese leader’s peace proposals for Ukraine “with respect.”

Delivering brief remarks for the cameras in response, Mr. Xi did not mention Ukraine at all.

Instead, according to the Russian translation of Mr. Xi’s remarks, he pointed out that Russia was the first country he had chosen to visit after being re-elected as the Chinese leader and vaguely declared that “our countries have many of the same or similar goals as we move forward.”

The public restraint by Mr. Xi was in keeping with his past practice. When he met with Mr. Putin in Uzbekistan last September, Mr. Xi also did not mention Ukraine in the public portion of their meeting, even though Mr. Putin acknowledged in that session that China had “questions and concerns” about the war.

Monday’s meeting was only the beginning of the three-day summit in Moscow, so it is too early to tell how much the two leaders will say about Ukraine. But the notable omission by Mr. Xi, and the very cursory mention of the war by Mr. Putin, indicated that for both leaders, Ukraine was only one element of their main focus this week: shoring up their countries’ overall relationship.

Early clues of where Ukraine stands on the agenda — at least the public agenda — could be gleaned from two coordinated newspaper articles that Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin published Monday morning in each other’s state media outlets: Both limited discussion of Ukraine to brief sections near the end.

Mr. Xi wrote that China was committed to peace in Ukraine but remained vague about just how that could be achieved, positing that “dialogue and consultations that are equal, reasonable and pragmatic can surely find a reasonable way forward for resolving the crisis.”

In his article, Mr. Putin gave no indication that Russia might give up some of the Ukrainian territory it has captured. Russia is open to a “political-diplomatic resolution” of the war, Mr. Putin wrote, reiterating his frequent position and saying that Ukraine and the West were uninterested in negotiations that would take “into account the prevailing geopolitical realities.”

While China has sought to cast Mr. Xi’s visit as a “ trip for peace ,” the proposal that Mr. Putin promised to review has little prospect of success. Ukraine’s government has ruled out ceding any territory in exchange for peace, pledging to recapture all of its land if Russia does not withdraw.

Ana Swanson and Shashank Bengali

Here are some ways China has helped Russia’s economy weather the war.

One year into the war in Ukraine, Western sanctions have left the Russian economy stagnant but not crippled . One major reason is that China, which was already one of Russia’s biggest trading partners, has significantly expanded the economic relationship of the two countries.

As Russia has lost direct access to Western consumer brands and imports of the most advanced technology, like semiconductors, Chinese companies have stepped in to provide Russia with cheaper alternatives. And as European nations have weaned themselves off Russian oil, China has bought more petroleum from Moscow, at discounted prices .

China has not supplied Russia with direct military aid for use in the war, according to U.S. officials, but it has increasingly provided an economic lifeline. Here is a look at some areas of the relationship:

The United States and Europe have sought to enforce a price cap on Russian oil to limit the Kremlin’s revenue from its most important export, but China and other key buyers, most importantly India, are still lining up. Last year, Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia to become China’s biggest supplier of crude .

In 2022, Russia managed to increase its oil output by 2 percent over the prior year and to boost oil export earnings by 20 percent, to $218 billion, according to estimates from the Russian government and the International Energy Agency, a group representing the world’s main energy consumers. With China’s Covid-related economic slowdown lifting, those purchases could rise further this year.

Consumer products

Samsung and Apple, previously major suppliers of cellphones to Russia, pulled out of that market after the invasion. Popular Chinese phone brands, like Xiaomi, Realme and Honor, have since taken off in Russia , according to Andrew S. David, the senior director of research and analysis at Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington nonprofit.

Shipments to Russia of other Chinese products, like passenger vehicles, have also rebounded. Overall Chinese exports to Russia reached a record high in December, helping to offset a steep drop in trade with Europe.

Semiconductors

Russia is unable to produce some precision missiles today because the country no longer has access to leading-edge semiconductors — a crucial component in smartphones, military technology and much more — that are made by the United States and its allies, including Taiwan and South Korea, American officials say.

China does not produce the most advanced types of semiconductors, and restrictions imposed by the United States last year are intended to stop Beijing from importing some of the most advanced types of chips and the equipment used to make them. But China has increased exports of its less advanced semiconductors to Russia, which experts say it needs for its weapons, even though Russia’s total chip imports remain below prewar levels.

Still, the Biden administration argues that China cannot fully make up for the chips Russia can no longer get from Ukraine’s allies. Nearly 40 percent of the chips Russia gets from China are defective, Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said last month .

‘Dual-use’ goods

The United States and its allies have not been able to stop all trade of so-called dual-use technologies that can be used in both military equipment and consumer goods. Tracking by research firms shows that trade in some goods that the Russian military effort could use has continued.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online data platform, shipments from China to Russia of aluminum oxide, a metal that can be used in armored vehicles, personal protective equipment and ballistic shields, soared from $16 million in 2021 to more than $400 million in 2022.

The group also found that shipments of minerals and chemicals used in the production of missile casings, bullets, explosives and propellants have also increased. And its data showed that China shipped $23 million worth of drones and $33 million worth of certain parts for aircraft and spacecraft to Russia last year, up from zero the year before.

Stanley Reed contributed reporting.

Marc Santora

To Ukraine, Xi’s push for peace seems at odds with the battlefield reality.

KYIV, Ukraine — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, will discuss his peace proposal for Ukraine with President Vladimir V. Putin, according to the Kremlin, but Ukrainian officials made clear on Monday that they considered the idea of peace talks at the moment to be preposterous. Recent battlefield developments, too, suggest that any talk of a cessation of hostilities would be divorced from the reality on the front lines.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said he would enter peace talks only if Mr. Putin withdraws his troops from Ukrainian territory — a precondition that a top Ukrainian official reiterated on Monday as Mr. Xi arrived in Moscow.

“The first and main point is the capitulation or withdrawal of the Russian occupation troops,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in a statement.

And Mr. Zelensky late Sunday underscored that Ukrainians who have fought and bled for more than a year are in no mood to yield.

“Another week when every day, every night, the Russian army shelled Ukrainian cities, villages, and killed our people,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address, emphasizing that Ukraine and its allies remained united in the goal of “expelling the occupier.”

While the front line has not shifted significantly in months, hundreds of soldiers from both sides are dying and being wounded daily. Officials in both Moscow and Kyiv claim their forces are bleeding the other side in an effort to gain an advantage in battles to come, once the weather warms.

The most intense fighting has been around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where an unrelenting swirl of violence has persisted for months and it remains unclear who has the upper hand on any given day.

For weeks, as Russian forces threw wave after wave of fighters — including many ill-trained former prisoners — at Ukrainian defenses and slowly gained ground, speculation grew that Ukrainian forces might be forced to retreat from Bakhmut to avoid encirclement. But in recent days, Ukrainian officials have expressed more conviction that their soldiers could hold on.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military’s eastern command, said over the weekend that Russian forces were now “tactically unable” to complete an encirclement of the city.

Andriy Yermak, Mr. Zelensky’s top adviser, expressed even greater confidence on Monday, saying that Russia’s “plans to occupy Bakhmut are now failing.”

To the south, however, Russian forces appeared to be making “creeping gains” around the city of Avdiivka, Britain’s defense intelligence agency reported on Monday, saying that Russian advances were threatening supply lines needed for Ukraine’s defense there.

At the same time, the Ukrainian military high command warned that Russia was racing to send reinforcements to relaunch their assault on Vulhedar , the Ukrainian stronghold where Russian forces have been dealt repeated blows.

Ukraine’s costly defense against the relentless Russian onslaughts in eastern Ukraine over the winter has been waged with a singular goal: Biding time until Kyiv’s troops are ready to try blasting through Russian lines to retake the initiative in the war.

When that moment will come — and where they might choose to strike first — remains unknown outside the closed-circle of the Ukrainian military high command as they gauge where Russian forces might be weakest and most exhausted. Ukrainian officials have suggested that they are waiting for the delivery of more sophisticated weapons pledged by Western allies before launching the counteroffensive.

Valerie Hopkins

The Putin-Xi summit has generated one awkward moment. Speaking before a six-course meal at the Kremlin, Xi said he was “confident” that the Russian people would support Putin in presidential elections next year. However, the Russian leader has not yet announced his candidacy.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, tried to dissuade reporters from assuming Xi had inside knowledge about Putin's plans. “You heard him wrong, Xi Jinping is sure that in a year the Russians will support Vladimir Putin. And here one can only share Xi Jinping’s confidence,” Peskov told state TV.

The Biden administration is authorizing an additional $350 million package of military aid for Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement. He said the assistance includes guided rockets, anti-tank weapons and other equipment.

Steven Erlanger

European officials agree to supply more artillery shells to Ukraine.

BRUSSELS — European Union foreign and defense ministers agreed on Monday to spend up to 2 billion euros, or $2.14 billion, to supply Ukraine with badly needed artillery shells, replenish their own national stocks and ramp up Europe’s ammunition production.

As is typical for the bloc and its 27 member states, the details of the agreement must still be worked out and questions remain about the speed of the response, a crucial matter as Ukraine prepares for a spring counteroffensive.

But the agreement nevertheless marks another step for the European Union in working collectively for Ukraine, and in an area — defense — that member countries largely keep as a national priority.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, hailed the agreement. “We are taking a key step toward delivering on our promises to provide Ukraine with more artillery ammunition,” he said on Twitter.

On Monday, 17 member states, plus Norway, also agreed to work with a Brussels institution, the European Defense Agency, on joint ammunition procurement, especially for the 155-millimeter artillery rounds Ukraine badly needs.

Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said that Germany would also let other countries join in its contracts with German defense manufacturers since speed was of the essence. “Our goal has to be to ship a significant amount of munitions to Ukraine before the end of this year,” he said.

His Estonian counterpart, Hanno Pevkur, said, “There are many, many details still to solve, but for me, it is most important that we conclude these negotiations, and it shows me one thing: If there is a will, there is a way.”

But even one of the most forceful advocates for helping Ukraine, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis of Lithuania, has admitted that the target of one million rounds this year, originally proposed by Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia, was aspirational. “It is possible that we might not be able to reach it,” he said.

With Ukraine using up artillery shells faster than the West can produce them, the Europeans are pushing ahead with a three-part program.

The first part, which is most urgent, involves pressing member states to send artillery shells from their own dwindling stocks to Ukraine, using €1 billion to reimburse them.

It remains unclear how many shells are available in E.U. stockpiles, since some member states have refused to divulge their holdings, partly for security reasons. And countries have been keen to preserve some of their own stocks in case the war suddenly escalates.

The new European money is meant to increase their willingness to part with those shells.

Kyiv’s primary need is for 155-millimeter shells to be used in Western guns. Ukraine says it wants 350,000 shells a month but arms manufacturers in the European Union can produce a total of only about 650,000 rounds of all types a year.

That is why the second part of the plan involves another €1 billion for arms manufacturers to accelerate the production of shells, both to replenish E.U. stocks and provide more for Ukraine. But that won’t be easy or quick: New contracts must be drawn up and signed, the now-rare raw materials to make explosives must be sourced and factories must be built.

Officials in Brussels want to start ordering ammunition collectively because they believe that larger orders are more attractive to manufacturers and can bring prices down. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and others have cited the example of Brussels buying Covid-19 vaccines in bulk.

Some countries, however, do not want to hand over that kind of power on defense issues to Brussels or believe that coalitions of member states with long experience in military contracts would be more efficient than the commission, which has not negotiated such contracts before.

There are split views, too, on what to buy: Some countries want to purchase only European-made ammunition, while others think that the need for speed should dictate buying off-the-shelf from wherever stocks can be found.

The third part of the plan is longer-term and centers on boosting Europe’s defense industry, but that would require billions more and remains vague.

So for now the immediate goal is to provide Ukraine with another one million 155-millimeter shells this year and sign new procurement contracts by the end of May, Mr. Borrell said.

Since the start of the war 13 months ago, Brussels has spent €450 million to reimburse members for supplying 350,000 shells to Ukraine.

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Putin begins visit in China, underscoring Moscow's ties with Beijing

The Associated Press

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, center, arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport to attend the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Parker Song/AP hide caption

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, center, arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport to attend the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a visit that underscores China's support for Moscow during its war in Ukraine as well as Russian backing for China's bid to expand its economic and diplomatic influence abroad.

The two countries have forged an informal alliance against the United States and other democratic nations that is now complicated by the Israel-Hamas war. China has sought to balance its ties with Israel against its relations with Iran and Syria, two countries that are strongly backed by Russia and with which China has forged ties for economic reasons as well as to challenge Washington's influence in the Middle East.

Putin's plane was met by an honor guard as the Russian leader began his visit that is also a show of support for Chinese leader Xi Jinping's signature "Belt and Road" initiative to build infrastructure and expand China's overseas influence.

In an interview to Chinese state media, Putin praised the massive but loosely linked BRI projects.

"Yes, we see that some people consider it an attempt by the People's Republic of China to put someone under its thumb, but we see otherwise, we just see desire for cooperation," he told state broadcaster CCTV, according to a transcript released by the Kremlin on Monday.

Putin will be among the highest profile guests at a gathering marking the 10th anniversary of Xi's announcement of the BRI project, which has laden countries such as Zambia and Sri Lanka with heavy debt from contracts with Chinese companies to build roads, airports and other public works they could not otherwise afford. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has praised the Chinese policy as bringing development to neglected areas.

Asked by reporters Friday about his visit, Putin said it would encompass talks on Belt and Road-related projects, which he said Moscow wants to link with efforts by an economic alliance of former Soviet Union nations mostly located in Central Asia to "achieve common development goals."

He also downplayed the impact of China's economic influence in a region that Russia has long considered its backyard and where it has worked to maintain political and military clout.

"We don't have any contradictions here, on the contrary, there is a certain synergy," Putin said.

Putin said he and Xi would also discuss growing economic ties between Moscow and Beijing in energy, high-tech and financial industries. China has also grown in importance as an export destination for Russia.

Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that from China's view, "Russia is a safe neighbor that is friendly, that is a source of cheap raw materials, that's a support for Chinese initiatives on the global stage and that's also a source of military technologies, some of those that China doesn't have."

"For Russia, China is its lifeline, economic lifeline in its brutal repression against Ukraine," Gabuev told The Associated Press.

"It's the major market for Russian commodities, it's a country that provides its currency and payment system to settle Russia's trade with the outside world — with China itself, but also with many other countries, and is also the major source of sophisticated technological imports, including dual-use goods that go into the Russian military machine."

Gabuev said that while Moscow and Beijing will be unlikely to forge a full-fledged military alliance, their defense cooperation will grow.

"Both countries are self-sufficient in terms of security and they benefit from partnering, but neither really requires a security guarantee from the other. And they preach strategic autonomy," he said.

"There will be no military alliance, but there will be closer military cooperation, more interoperability, more cooperation on projecting force together, including in places like the Arctic and more joint effort to develop a missile defense that makes the U.S. nuclear planning and planning of the U.S. and its allies in Asia and in Europe more complicated," he added.

The Chinese and Soviets were Cold War rivals for influence among left-leaning states, but China and Russia have since partnered in the economic, military and diplomatic spheres.

Just weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine last February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing and the sides signed an agreement pledging a "no-limits" relationship. Beijing's attempts to present itself as a neutral peace broker in Russia's war on Ukraine have been widely dismissed by the international community.

Xi visited Moscow in March as part of a flurry of exchanges between the countries. China has condemned international sanctions imposed on Russia, but hasn't directly addressed an arrest warrant issued for Putin by the International Criminal Court on charges of alleged involvement in the abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine.

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Putin announces plans to visit China in May

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a cabinet meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. Putin said he plans to visit China in May, in what could become the first foreign trip for the Russian leader after he extended his rule by six more years in an election that offered voters little real choice. Putin’s inauguration is scheduled for May 7. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he plans to visit China in May, in what could become the first foreign trip for the Russian leader after he extended his rule by six more years in an election that offered voters little real choice.

Putin announced the plans for the visit at a congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow. He didn’t say when exactly it would take place and didn’t offer any other details.

Putin’s inauguration is scheduled for May 7, Russian lawmakers said earlier this week. Last month, the 71-year-old Russian leader secured his fifth term in office in a vote with no real opposition, extending his 24-year rule.

Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation because of its war against Ukraine has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War.

According to a recent U.S. assessment , China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in the conflict.

China has repeatedly said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow.

Beijing has not provided direct lethal military support for Russia and has sought to project itself as neutral in the Ukraine conflict. It has refused to condemn Moscow’s actions and declared in 2022 that it had a “no-limits” friendship with Russia. The country has denounced Western sanctions against Moscow, and accused NATO and the United States of provoking Putin’s invasion.

China has also proposed a peace plan that was largely dismissed by Ukraine’s allies, who insisted that Moscow must withdraw its forces from the neighboring country as a condition for peace.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Debate over possible Putin visit heats up in South Africa amid U.S. "concern" over BRICS intentions

By Sarah Carter

Updated on: June 2, 2023 / 5:32 AM EDT / CBS News

Johannesburg — The foreign ministers of the five nations of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa, were wrapping up a meeting Friday in Cape Town, South Africa, amid mounting speculation over the prospect of Russian President Vladimir Putin attending an August summit in the country. In March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin's arrest over alleged war crimes in Ukraine , so he could potentially face arrest if he sets foot in South Africa, which is an ICC signatory country.

The South African government has said it's seeking legal advice about possible loopholes in the Rome Statute, which established the international court, that might enable Putin to attend the higher-level BRICS summit this summer.

On Monday, South Africa's foreign minister Naledi Pandor announced an order granting diplomatic immunity to all foreign dignitaries attending the meeting this week, as well as the upcoming one in August. It was the clearest signal to date that the South African government is keen to enable Putin to attend the meeting.

• How Russia's Wagner Group exploits Africa to fund its fight in Ukraine

Obed Bapela, a senior official in the office of South Africa's presidency, told the BBC World Service that the government planned to submit changes to the country's laws, specifically the ICC Implementation Act, to parliament in June that would give leaders the power to decide who to arrest, regardless of ICC warrants. Bapela said the government would also seek a specific waiver from the ICC to ensure it would not have to arrest Putin if he did show up in August.

By Friday morning, however, reports in South African media suggested the government was considering a proposal to move the August BRICS summit from Durban to China, which would eliminate any pressure on Pretoria to detain Putin if he does attend. China is not an ICC signatory state, so is under no obligation to detain anyone on a warrant issued by the court. All BRICS member nations would have to approve any decision to move the summit.

The Democratic Alliance, South Africa's main opposition party, has launched a court application to force authorities to arrest Putin if he comes this summer.

Speaking Wednesday at the National Assembly in Cape Town, President Cyril Ramaphosa said there had been "concerted efforts to draw South Africa into the broader geopolitical contest around the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Yet we have consistently maintain our non-aligned stance, our respect for the U.N. Charter, and for the peaceful resolution of conflict through dialogue."

As the debate over Putin's possible visit intensified, Ramaphosa said he would send four of his senior government ministers, including Pandor, to G7 countries as envoys to explain South Africa's commitment to a "non-aligned" position on Russia's war in Ukraine. 

Earlier in May, Ramaphosa announced an African leaders' "peace mission" to Ukraine and Russia in June. Presidents Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine have said they will meet the African heads of state, who will be led by Ramaphosa.

"Principal to our discussions are efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the devastating conflict in Ukraine," Ramaphosa said when announcing the mission by himself and six other African heads of state.

The BRICS meetings come on the heels of a late-May summit of the Group of Seven (G-7) leaders in Japan. That meeting was marked by the U.S. and the world's other biggest economies hitting Russia with a raft of new sanctions over its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and discussion of countering an increasingly assertive China.

South Africa was not invited to the recent G-7 summit — the first time the country had not been invited since Ramaphosa took office in 2018.

U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Reuben Brigety, who on May 11 accused the country of providing Russia with weapons in contradiction to its stated neutrality in Ukraine, noted that officials from BRICS nations had framed the bloc as a "counterpoint" to the G-7, and he made it clear the U.S. was watching.

"Our officials expressed quite serious concern of the explicit articulation of the BRICS configuration as a, quote, counterpoint to the G-7," Brigety said . "Of course, South Africa is free to choose its diplomatic and economic partners however it chooses and so is the United States of America."

"This is not a matter of bullying, as I often hear in this context. It's not a matter of threatening," Brigety said. "This is how any relationship works."

Regarding the prospect of Putin visiting South Africa in August and authorities declining to place him under arrest under its obligations as an ICC signatory nation, Brigety said the U.S. could not "understand why the government of South Africa will not publicly and fulsomely commit to the obligations that it has voluntarily taken upon itself."

South African-U.S. relations have been strained since the country asserted its "non-aligned stance" on the Russian war in Ukraine, and they deteriorated further when Brigety accused South Africa of secretly loading arms onto a sanctioned Russian ship in the Simon's Town harbor in December 2022, before the ship returned to Russia with its contents.

His remarks came after tension flared in February over South Africa's decision to host joint naval war games off its coast with Russian and Chinese warships, as the world marked a full year since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

During the Thursday meetings in Cape Town, the five BRICS foreign ministers will be joined virtually by their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Argentina and the Democratic Republic, to name a few.

This wider group, referred to as "Friends of BRICS," represent a growing collection of nations from what's referred to as the Global South who are interested in joining the BRICS bloc.

Russian News agency TASS quoted a source on May 26 as saying Putin had "not withdrawn his participation in the summit," adding: "The Russian leader has been invited." 

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Putin announces plans to visit China in May

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he plans to visit China in May, in what could become the first foreign trip for the Russian leader after he extended his rule by six more years in an election that offered voters little real choice.

Putin announced the plans for the visit at a congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow. He didn’t say when exactly it would take place and didn’t offer any other details.

Putin’s inauguration is scheduled for May 7, Russian lawmakers said earlier this week. Last month, the 71-year-old Russian leader secured his fifth term in office in a vote with no real opposition, extending his 24-year rule.

Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation because of its war against Ukraine has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War.

According to a recent U.S. assessment, China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in the conflict.

China has repeatedly said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow.

Beijing has not provided direct lethal military support for Russia and has sought to project itself as neutral in the Ukraine conflict. It has refused to condemn Moscow’s actions and declared in 2022 that it had a “no-limits” friendship with Russia. The country has denounced Western sanctions against Moscow, and accused NATO and the United States of provoking Putin’s invasion.

China has also proposed a peace plan that was largely dismissed by Ukraine’s allies, who insisted that Moscow must withdraw its forces from the neighboring country as a condition for peace.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Related Stories

Putin says plans to visit China in May

R ussian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he plans to visit China in May, his first planned trip abroad since re-election as Moscow seeks deeper ties with Beijing.

The West has viewed Russia and China with increased anxiety over the past two years as they boost military co-operation and seek to expand their global influence.

"A visit in May is planned," Putin said at a business forum in Moscow, without providing further detail. The Russian leader last visited China in October 2023.

Days before Russia launched its full-scale military assault on Ukraine in February 2022, Beijing and Moscow declared a "no limits" partnership and have since boosted trade to record highs.

Moscow has looked to China as a crucial economic lifeline since the West hit Russia with unprecedented sanctions over its military offensive.

China has meanwhile benefited from cheap Russian energy imports and access to vast natural resources, including steady gas shipments via the Power of Siberia pipeline.

But their close economic partnership has come under close scrutiny in the West, which has threatened to sanction overseas banks and companies that work with Moscow.

The Izvestia newspaper reported in March that Chinese lenders Ping An Bank and Bank of Ningbo had stopped accepting payments in Chinese yuan from Russia, alongside several smaller banks.

The Kremlin admitted there were some problems with cross-border transactions, but said the West was to blame for putting "unprecedented pressure" on Chinese firms.

- 'Interference' -

Putin's announcement came shortly after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Beijing, in part to defuse tensions with the rival power.

Both Beijing and Moscow have been outspoken in their criticism of the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin in February accused Washington of "interfering" in their countries' affairs during a telephone call.

Beijing has refused to condemn Moscow's Ukraine offensive, instead offering itself as a potential mediator between the two sides.

Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said China's peace plan, which critics have called "vague", was the most reasonable any country had put forward.

"This plan has been criticised for being unspecific... But it is a reasonable plan that the great Chinese civilisation has put forward for discussion," Lavrov said.

China has itself been criticised by the United States over a number of thorny issues, including increasingly belligerent behaviour toward self-ruled democratic Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.

Most recently, tensions have grown over Washington's move to ban the popular social media app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

Russia's Putin says he plans to visit China in May

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Pope Francis to Vladimir Putin: A negotiated peace is better than an endless war

By Almudena Martínez-Bordiú

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 25, 2024 / 16:10 pm

Asked during a new interview if he has any message for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who instigated the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis stated that “a negotiated peace is better than an endless war.”

CBS News broadcast some excerpts April 24 from a new interview conducted by journalist Norah O’Donnell with Pope Francis at St. Martha House, the pontiff’s residence in the Vatican.

During the exchange, the full version of which will be released on May 19, the Holy Father reflected on world conflicts and especially on the suffering of children during wars.

O’Donnell asked the Holy Father if he had any message for Vladimir Putin regarding Ukraine, to which the pontiff replied: “Please, countries at war, all of them... Stop the war. Seek to negotiate. Seek peace. A negotiated peace is better than an endless war,” he said.

Regarding the children who are suffering the consequences of the war in Gaza, Pope Francis said that “every afternoon at 7 p.m. I call the parish in Gaza. There are about 600 people there, and they tell me what’s happening. It’s very hard. Very, very hard. And food comes in, but they have to struggle to get it. It’s very hard,” he lamented. The pope also assured that he prays a lot for peace to be achieved.

The pontiff also asked people to think about the children of Ukraine, who due to the war “forget how to smile,” which he described as “very serious.”

In the interview, Pope Francis also talked about climate change and said that those who deny it do so “because they don’t understand it or for what benefits them,” and stressed that “climate change exists.”

Regarding those who don’t see a place for themselves in the Catholic Church anymore, the Holy Father responded that in the Church “there is always a place,” noting that “the Church is very big. It’s more than a church building … you shouldn’t flee from it.”

Pope Francis’ controversial ‘white flag’ statements

When referring to the conflict in Ukraine during an interview released in March by the Swiss radio station RSI, Pope Francis said: “I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people, and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates.”

The words sparked some controversy, as they were interpreted as a call for Ukraine’s surrender to Russia and had to be clarified by the spokesman for the Holy See’s Press Office, Matteo Bruni.

The Vatican spokesman clarified that the Holy Father supported “a cessation of hostilities and a truce achieved with the courage to negotiate,” rather than Ukraine’s outright surrender.

Bruni also pointed out that it was the journalist interviewing the pontiff who had used the term “white flag” when asking the question.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Putin announces plans to visit China in May

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he plans to visit China in May, in what could become the first foreign trip for the Russian leader after he extended his rule by six more years in an election that offered voters little real choice

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he plans to visit China in May, in what could become the first foreign trip for the Russian leader after he extended his rule by six more years in an election that offered voters little real choice.

Putin announced the plans for the visit at a congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow. He didn't say when exactly it would take place and didn't offer any other details.

Putin's inauguration is scheduled for May 7, Russian lawmakers said earlier this week. Last month, the 71-year-old Russian leader secured his fifth term in office in a vote with no real opposition, extending his 24-year rule.

Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation because of its war against Ukraine has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War.

According to a recent U.S. assessment, China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in the conflict.

China has repeatedly said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow.

Beijing has not provided direct lethal military support for Russia and has sought to project itself as neutral in the Ukraine conflict. It has refused to condemn Moscow’s actions and declared in 2022 that it had a “no-limits” friendship with Russia. The country has denounced Western sanctions against Moscow, and accused NATO and the United States of provoking Putin’s invasion.

China has also proposed a peace plan that was largely dismissed by Ukraine’s allies, who insisted that Moscow must withdraw its forces from the neighboring country as a condition for peace.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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