Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprecedented four-day visit to China has come to an end. These days have turned into a real diplomatic marathon for the Russian leader, TASS reports.
He had full-fledged contacts with the heads of state and prime ministers of 17 countries. And in terms of working hours, Putin violated all accepted working hours norms, working a total of 48 hours.
If August 31 can be considered a warm-up before the marathon – the president’s public events lasted about 3.5 hours, then, for example, on September 1, the day of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Putin’s working day stretched out for 16 hours. The president’s schedule on September 2 was no less busy and also exceeded 14 working hours. On September 3, Putin started work unusually early. At the beginning of the ninth hour in the morning, he joined the leaders invited to the solemn events organized on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese people in the War of Resistance against Japan and the end of World War II. The work ended with a conversation with journalists from the Kremlin press pool at 22:30.
The semantic load during the days of the visit was also unprecedented. Putin paid attention to almost all vectors of world politics. It was necessary to discuss not only the agenda of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the development of Russian-Chinese relations. The settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, the Iranian nuclear program, the situation in the Middle East and Transcaucasia were constantly on the agenda during Putin’s negotiations with his counterparts from India, Turkey, Iran and other countries.
The President held full-scale talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chin, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Nepalese Prime Minister Sharma Oli, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso, and Vietnamese President Luong Tran Dai Quang. The talks with North Korean President Kim Jong-un were the second longest, second only to the host China. Putin also spoke with Mongolian President Ukhnaagin Khurelsukh as part of the Russia-China-Mongolia trilateral summit.
Within the framework of the SCO events and during the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese people in the War of Resistance Against Japan and the end of World War II, contacts were no less intense. As they say in diplomatic language, Putin was able to talk with many colleagues “on the spot”. Later, full-fledged meetings took place with many of them. However, among such short-term contacts, one can note the communication with the head of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, a conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, as well as a conversation with the descendants of Soviet marshals.
At the end of this unprecedented large-scale visit to China, Putin also found time to talk to the Kremlin press pul. The president answered questions for a full 50 minutes.