Putin, Xi meet in China to reaffirm close ties

Putin, Xi meet in China to reaffirm close ties

Vladimir Putin officially began his fifth term as president of Russia last week this week he’s on a two-day State visit to China on his first foreign trip since being inaugurated China rolled out the red carpet for Putin who met with Chinese president xiin ping in Beijing Thursday it was the second meeting between the two autocratic leaders in seven months where both agreed to strengthen their economic ties Ian Bremer joins me for more he is the president of the Eurasia group a political risk consultancy firm Ian good to be with you thank you how should we think about the shei and Putin relationship at this pass uh it’s improving John uh there’s no question as the United States continues to put more pressure on the China relationship economically and you’ve seen the announcement of 18 billion in additional tariffs uh just over the last couple of days from the white house uh China’s willingness to do more business with Russia uh is increasing but there are some limits I mean the big takeaways that Putin would have liked to see from this meeting from a deliverable perspective would have been a concrete agreement on the uh the power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline uh to bring a lot of the trapped gas from Russia uh that can’t export can’t get out to China still haven’t seen an agreement on that they also want the Chinese to be much more willing to engage in financial transactions between the Chinese Banks and Russian exporters Chinese haven’t given on that either because they want to avoid American sanctions so a lot of very warm uh statements being made by these two leaders but the big challenges that Russia has as a rogue State I mean Iran will do unfed business with them North Korea will do unfettered business China has some responsibilities on the global stage and that does constrain how far they can go should we then think of this Ian as a purely transactional relationship or might there be a value proposition something kind of larger that might find the two of them Allied in the future I I think it’s more than transactional because the Chinese government does believe that the United States wants to contain them in terms of you know their semiconductor development or their you know ability to you know lead the world in postc carbon energy transition they believe that as they get really good at things at a global level the Americans don’t want the Chinese under any circumstances to be global leaders and as a consequence China thinks that they need to have better stronger relations with other countries out there especially other countries that aren’t necessarily going to follow America’s lead xiin ping was in Europe last week and he had a much tougher reception chillier reception in France in Serbia in Hungary those were his meetings they’re not like all it’s not the top of the charts for Europe right now and the one major country met him together with the head of the European commission who’s much more hawkish on China so of course on the back of that you know spending some time with Putin shouldn’t be all that surprising it’s more than just transactional John let me ask you quickly on on um on Ukraine uh last week Russia said it was practicing deploying tactical nuclear weapons now NATO allies are getting closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces there are you what’s your um escalation threshold how are you feeling about the the nature of escalation in that conflict I don’t see any escalation on the tactical Nuclear front from Russia thank God the Chinese one of the few red lines the Chinese have for the Russians is that um but uh in terms of what the West is willing to do for Ukraine this is desperation this is an increasing concern that Ukraine is losing uh that the Russians have taken more territory from Ukraine in the last couple weeks than they’ve taken in the last six months uh and the ukrainians don’t have the air defenses to stop the Russians from causing huge damage to their critical infrastructure to their ability to generate electricity um and that is a serious problem for Ukraine so you see the Americans and NATO allies considering moves to support Ukraine that would have been way off the table even a couple of months ago that that’s what I’m hearing right now Ian bremmer president of the Eurasia group thank you so much Ian sure John

China rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday. It was the second meeting between the two autocratic leaders in seven months. Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, joins CBS News to assess the state of Russia-China relations.

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