Russian President Vladimir Putin got the show of unity and enduring partnership he wanted from Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Beijing, but he did not get the gas pipeline deal he reportedly wanted and the Kremlin took a defensive tone on Wednesday when discussing the overall results of Putin’s trip.
China went out of its way to signal that no fissures were opened in its “no-limits partnership” with Russia by President Donald Trump’s visit the previous week. Putin enjoyed a nearly identical reception ceremony and China played up both its common interests with Russia and Xi’s personal friendship with Putin.
As it turned out, there are limits to the “no-limits partnership,” and one of them is the Power of Siberia 2 (PoS-2) pipeline project. Russia is desperate to complete the 1,600-mile, $15 billion pipeline, which would carry some 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russian fields to Chinese consumers each year. The pipeline would go a long way toward helping Russia recoup the lost income from gas sales to Europe ended by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Chinese officials rarely mention the PoS-2 project and, when they do, they usually either highlight the tremendous engineering difficulties of the proposed 8 to 10-year construction project, or they repeat their demands that Russia sell its gas to them at domestic-customer discount prices.
Russia’s reluctance to meet these discount demands has been a major sticking point in the pipeline deal for the past six years. A newer obstacle, which reportedly came up during Putin’s meetings with Xi, is China’s desire to avoid becoming too dependent on any single supplier for its energy needs. The Chinese have set limits for how much energy they will purchase from any single nation, and Russia has reached that limit.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was reduced on Wednesday to offering vague platitudes about Putin and Xi reaching “basic parameters of understanding on the Power of Siberia 2” and developing a general sense of “the route and how it will be built,” but Putin clearly did not get the commitments he was looking for, and there is still no starting date for construction.
The joint statement from China and Russia on Xi and Putin’s talks said they “agreed to continue deepening comprehensive relations of partnership in the field of energy” and “deepen mutually beneficial collaboration in areas of oil and gas, and coal,” but did not mention the PoS-2 project.
Putin’s fizzle on the gas pipeline made for an interesting contrast with China agreeing to buy more American energy products, according to President Trump.
“They’ve agreed they want to buy oil from the United States, they’re going to go to Texas, we’re going to start sending Chinese ships to Texas and to Louisiana and to Alaska,” Trump said last Thursday after meeting with Xi.
President Donald J. Trump participates in a welcome ceremony with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China, Thursday, May 14, 2026, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
“They have an insatiable appetite for energy, and we have unlimited energy,” Trump said, boasting that America now produces more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.
On Tuesday, financial firm LSEG reported that four tankers filled with liquefied natural gas (LNG) were sailing from Louisiana to China and were expected to arrive between June 15 and 28. Their voyages marked the first shipments of LNG from the U.S. to China during Trump’s second term.
The joint statement was nearly 10,000 words long and touched on a wide range of other subjects of mutual agreement, including China’s aspirations to take control of Taiwan.
The most pointed passages in the joint statement expressed opposition to President Trump’s plans for a “Golden Dome” missile shield over North America, denouncing it as a threat to stability, which is what Russia and China have always said about every missile defense platform not created by themselves.
Putin and Xi signed around 20 documents during the Russian leader’s visit, which was about half of what Russia was reportedly hoping for.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (Maxim Shemetov/Pool Photo via AP)
The Kremlin also sought to deflect reporter questions about the apparently underwhelming outcome of Putin’s visit by insisting that “not everything was visible on the surface.”
Although Putin’s visit looked like the perfect time to push for the pipeline, given China’s anxieties about threats to its energy supplies from the Iran war, the Moscow Times argued that the Iran situation might have killed Power of Siberia 2 for good because it motivated China to develop many other options for obtaining oil and gas.
With these options in his pocket, Xi can drive a harder bargain with Russia than ever and, if the Russians will not make the pricing and contract concessions Xi wants, the pipeline project is not going anywhere.
Conversely, recent events could have made Putin more reluctant than ever to reduce Russia’s stature compared to China, becoming an even more junior member of the Axis of Tyranny as China takes ever more control over the dependent Russian economy.
China nevertheless remains Russia’s largest trading partner and the top customer for Russian oil, and that relationship seems unlikely to change. Xi said on Wednesday that China’s relations with Russia are at a “historic high.”
“The international landscape is undergoing profound changes, and the world faces the danger of sliding back into the law of the jungle,” said Xi — a comment hard to swallow from the leader who spends his days crushing democratic movements and terrorizing Taiwan, talking about his meeting with the leader who launched an incredibly bloody unprovoked war against a neighboring country four years ago.