Xi Jinping declined to meet with Putin at the BRICS summit
Chinese President Xi Jinping will not hold a separate bilateral meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in New Delhi. This was stated by Russian Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov, who noted that the leaders may only have a brief conversation on the sidelines in the format of a so-called “walking meeting.”
A previous meeting took place on August 31 in Bishkek at a session of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO member states, but those talks failed to yield progress on the “Power of Siberia-2” project, which calls for the supply of up to 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year to China. The parties were unable to agree on a price: Beijing expects to pay about $50 per thousand cubic meters or $120–130 at the price for domestic industrial consumers, while Russia proposes basing the price on the cost of gas under the “Power of Siberia-1” project, at $250–260.
This was reported by The Moscow Times.
During the summit in Bishkek, the Russian delegation, led by dictator Vladimir Putin, held a meeting with the Chinese delegation, where the Kremlin leader tried to paint a rosy picture of a shared future for Russia and China to Xi Jinping. But the whole thing turned out rather pitifully.
China urged the Russian delegation to stop raising the issue of building the new “Power of Siberia-2” gas pipeline, which the Kremlin had hoped would replace the lost European market. Beijing will agree to the contract only on the condition that the price of fuel remains at the domestic Russian level—about $50 per thousand cubic meters.
