As the Chinese leader left Moscow on Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida left Kyiv after a surprise visit intended as a show of support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a counterpoint to Xi’s Russia trip.
Rahm Emanuel, the American ambassador to Japan, a close U.S. ally, said the dueling visits reflected “two very different European-Pacific partnerships.”
“Prime Minister Kishida stands with freedom, and Xi stands with a war criminal,” he said in a statement, referring to an arrest warrant the International Criminal Court issued for Putin last week over his alleged involvement in the abduction of Ukrainian children.
Moscow denies the allegations, while Beijing has accused the court of using “double standards.” Neither Russia, China, Ukraine nor the U.S. are members of the court.
Putin the ‘junior partner’?
Beyond Ukraine, Xi’s Russia trip furthered his efforts to portray China as an emerging global leader, building on the momentum from a recent Beijing-brokered deal to restore diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
While in Moscow, Xi and Putin talked about the idea of a world in which no one country makes decisions for others. “We are working in solidarity on the formation of a more just and democratic multipolar world order,” Putin said on the Kremlin’s website.
But what Xi’s visit mostly underscored, experts say, is how imbalanced the China-Russia relationship is becoming.
“It certainly shows Russia needing Beijing far more than the other way around,” said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, who specializes in Chinese foreign policy.
Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, said Xi’s visit was “essentially permission from Beijing to keep fighting,” but that Putin didn’t get much else on Ukraine, while announcements on economic cooperation largely favored China.
“While there were undoubtedly agreements we are not…
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