Putin Arrives in China’s Tianjin for Security Summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Sunday in Tianjin, the northern Chinese port city, for a regional security summit that Beijing hopes will help counter Western influence in global affairs, according to Chinese and Russian state media.

On this rare four-day visit to Russia’s neighbor and largest trading partner, Putin received a grand welcome from senior city officials, Russian news agency TASS reported in its livestream of the event.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV described relations between the two countries as “at their best in history” and “the most stable, mature, and strategically significant among major powers.”

President Xi Jinping will host nearly 20 world leaders in Tianjin for the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It marks the largest gathering since the bloc was founded in 2001 by six Eurasian nations.

In recent years, the security-focused SCO has expanded to 10 permanent members, with 16 dialogue partners and observer states. Its scope has broadened from counterterrorism and security to economic and military cooperation.

Xi is expected to use the summit to showcase an alternative to the U.S.-led global order while extending high-level diplomatic backing to Russia, which has been hit by sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.

A day before his arrival, Putin criticized Western sanctions in a written interview with China’s official Xinhua news agency, saying Moscow and Beijing jointly oppose “discriminatory” restrictions in global trade. Russia’s economy, strained by sanctions and the costs of war, is teetering on the edge of recession.

Leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia are also attending, with Beijing framing the summit as a powerful display of unity among the “Global South”—a term for developing and lower-income nations, largely in the Southern Hemisphere.