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Meredith Chen

Few relationships among world leaders have been portrayed as personally as that between President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Xi, who rarely publicly reveals much about his personal life or emotions, once described Putin as his “best and most intimate friend”.
Over the years, their rapport has been defined not only by summits and state visits, but also a growing catalogue of highly personal rituals involving food, birthday celebrations, sports events, boat rides and lakeside tea.
That carefully cultivated friendship returns to the spotlight on Tuesday, when Putin arrives in Beijing for a two-day state visit, less than a week after US President Donald Trump wrapped up his own closely watched trip to China.




The visit comes at a moment of mounting geopolitical uncertainty. Relationships between Beijing, Moscow and Washington are growing more complicated, while talks to end the US-Israel war on Iran remain stalled and Russia’s conflict in Ukraine drags on.
Putin’s reception is expected to include a ceremony at Tiananmen Square with an orchestra and honour guard, followed by an informal tea with his “old friend” Xi.
While Trump projected a close personal rapport with his Chinese counterpart during his visit, Xi and Putin have cultivated a far more enduring and demonstrative relationship, marked by frequent meetings and high-profile displays of personal familiarity.
Since officially taking office in 2013, Xi has met Putin on more than 40 occasions – far outstripping his encounters with Western leaders.
When the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Bali summit in October 2013 coincided with Putin’s 61st birthday, Xi presented him with a cake and the two leaders celebrated together over sausage and vodka – a moment recalled by the Russian leader ahead of his 2018 state visit to China.
“President Xi Jinping is probably the only world leader I have celebrated one of my birthdays with,” he said in an interview with Chinese state media. “I had never celebrated a birthday with any of my foreign colleagues before. But I did with President Xi Jinping.”
In the interview, Putin also described Xi as “a very accessible and sincere person” and “a very reliable partner”.
Xi has spoken of Putin in similarly warm terms, telling a 2019 interview with Russian media that he was “the foreign colleague I have had the closest relationship with” and calling him “my best and most intimate friend”.
“I deeply cherish the profound friendship with President Putin,” Xi said, adding that “I often look back with great pleasure on every interaction I have had with President Putin.”

In February 2014, Xi attended the opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics, making him one of the few major world leaders to appear alongside Putin on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Crimea, which sparked the Ukraine crisis.
According to Chinese state media, Xi told Putin that, in keeping with Chinese tradition, “when a neighbour is celebrating a happy occasion, I should come in person to offer my congratulations”.
The visit – which coincided with the Chinese New Year – was widely seen as a significant gesture of support for Putin at a time when tensions with the West were intensifying.
In a highlight of Putin’s state visit to China in June 2018, the Russian leader tried his hand at making Tianjin’s famous jian bing guozi – pancakes wrapped around fried dough sticks – which he served to his host during a banquet.
“You must remember, I made this myself,” Putin told Xi, according to Chinese state media.
Putin also made a baozi, or steamed stuffed bun. This was preserved by the Tianjin restaurant group Go Believe, whose staff were at the banquet demonstrating the process to the two leaders.
The restaurant reportedly had Putin’s creation 3D-scanned and reproduced, keeping the replica as part of its corporate collection.
The two leaders travelled on a high-speed train from Beijing to Tianjin, where they also jointly dropped the puck to kick off a hockey match.
Xi presented Putin with China’s first friendship medal on a large gold chain, calling him a “good and old friend of the Chinese people”.
Around three months later, in September 2018, the two leaders showed off their cooking skills again, this time in Russia. They donned blue aprons to cook up some traditional Russian pancakes, called blini, which they topped with caviar and washed down with vodka shots.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Xi has walked a diplomatic tightrope, seeking to present China as a global peacemaker while strengthening ties with its closest ally, which faces sweeping international sanctions, isolation and Western accusations of war crimes.
Days before Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, China and Russia declared a “no limits” strategic partnership on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Putin’s name surfaced last week during Xi’s talks with Trump in the Zhongnanhai compound, once an imperial garden and now the centre of power for the Communist Party and central government.
When Xi mentioned that it was “very rare” for foreign leaders to be received there, he added that Putin was one of the few to have visited the compound.
During Putin’s state visit in May 2024, he and Xi took a stroll there, sat down for a lakeside tea and had “in-depth discussions on strategic issues of mutual concern”. A statement from Beijing described the atmosphere as notably “relaxed”.
This trip will mark the first time that China has hosted the leaders of Russia and the US in the same month outside a multilateral setting. It places Beijing at the centre of the triangular dynamic as it seeks to manage ties with both Moscow and Washington while positioning itself as a pivotal and stabilising force in an increasingly fractured world order.
It will also be the first time that leaders of the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council will have visited China within half a year.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing in December, followed by the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January.


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Xi Jinping’s friendship with Vladimir Putin has been cultivated over many visits and informal events, from pancakes to lakeside teas


Xi Jinping’s friendship with Vladimir Putin has been cultivated over many visits and informal events, from pancakes to lakeside teas.


Vodka, bullet train and boat rides: how Xi and Putin built up a personal rapport

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Xi Jinping’s friendship with Vladimir Putin has been cultivated over many visits and informal events, from pancakes to lakeside teas

Xi Jinping’s friendship with Vladimir Putin has been cultivated over many visits and informal events, from pancakes to lakeside teas