BEIJING: China wants to strengthen cooperation with Russia and defend shared security interests, Premier Li Qiang told visiting Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Monday. At talks in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Li described Russia and China as “good neighbours and good partners who trust each other”. “China is willing to strengthen the alignment of development strategies with Russia and expand cooperation in various fields,” Chinese national broadcaster CCTV quoted Li as saying. Mishustin is on a two-day visit to China which Russia’s TASS news agency said would include talks with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday.
The talks are expected to centre on economic and technological cooperation as Russia tries to cope with Western sanctions over its war in Ukraine and China faces friction in relations with the United States over trade and technology. Li and Mishustin held the last regular heads-of-government meeting between Russia and China in August 2024, when China’s premier praised the “new vigour” and “vitality” in mutual ties. The Kremlin said that it attaches “very great” importance to Mishustin’s visit, but did not say whether President Vladimir Putin would send a message to Xi via his prime minister.
Putin and Xi signed a “no limits” partnership in February 2022. Since then, Russia has turned to China to mitigate the impact of sanctions, highlighting record bilateral trade, increased settlements in yuan and deepening energy cooperation. The proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which could deliver an additional 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year to China through Mongolia from Russian Arctic gas fields, moved a step closer to completion earlier this year although questions remain about pricing.
Meanwhile, Russia said on Monday that its troops had advanced in the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a transport and logistics hub that Moscow’s forces have been seeking to capture for well over a year. The Russian Defence Ministry said its soldiers were destroying what it described as surrounded Ukrainian formations near Pokrovsk’s railway station and industrial zone, and had entered the city’s Prigorodny area and dug in there.
The Ukrainian open-source mapping project Deep State – which Russian war bloggers say is regularly slow to update Moscow’s gains – shows Russian troops in control of a small southern part of the city, with most of the rest of it still depicted as a grey zone fully controlled by neither force. Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said on Monday that the operation to clear the city of Russian troops continued, and Kyiv’s forces had thwarted an attempt to cut off a supply route from Rodynske, to the north.
Pokrovsk had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people, but most civilians have long since fled its ruins. Capturing it could give Moscow a platform to drive towards Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region which Russia wants to capture in its entirety. North of Pokrovsk, however, Ukraine has recorded recent gains near Dobropillia, where the general staff said last week it had recaptured over 185 square km.
If it falls, Pokrovsk will be the most important Russian territorial gain inside Ukraine since Moscow took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024 after one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Since then, Russia has made steady but slow gains in intense fighting along the 1,000 km front line of a war that has dragged on for more than three years and eight months. No face-to-face peace talks have taken place since July, despite attempts by US President Donald Trump to push for an end to the conflict. Kyiv says the costly fighting is largely stalemated and its territorial losses marginal; Moscow says it is still making important gains.
Elsewhere, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out heavy overnight strikes against a Ukrainian military airfield, a military equipment repair base and military-industrial facilities, as well as gas infrastructure facilities that supported them. Moscow said its troops had also attacked Ukrainian forces near another city, Kupiansk, and dislodged them from four fortified positions in the industrial zone on the left bank of the Oskol River.
Ukrainian military spokesman Viktor Trehubov said on Sunday that Russian attempts to get to the centre of Kupiansk had failed so far, and recent Ukrainian attacks had slowed Russian advances. — Reuters
