Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia was ready to continue supplying energy to China and described his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping as friendly and constructive.
According to Reuters, Putin stressed that relations between Russia and China are at an "unprecedented" level and that the two countries play a stabilizing role on the international stage, remaining committed to an independent foreign policy.
The joint Russian-Chinese statement points out that "the efforts of some states to unilaterally manage world affairs, in a spirit reminiscent of the colonial era, have failed."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that a general agreement has been reached with China on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, although details remain under negotiation and no clear timelines have been set for the implementation of the project.
Siberia 2 pipeline:
Reliable news agencies insisted yesterday that the most important issue that Vladimir Putin will raise with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his two-day presence in Beijing (expected to begin last night) will be the finalization of an agreement for the construction of the giant Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline.
It is a 2.600 km long pipeline, designed to transport to China, via Mongolia, natural gas from the Siberian Yamal Peninsula, i.e. from the fields where natural gas was transported to European markets before the Russian invasion.
The Power of Siberia 1 pipeline, which transports about 38 million cubic meters of Russian gas a year to China, is already in operation. The Power of Siberia 2 was designed to transport 50 billion cubic meters (bcm), about 12% of the annual needs of the Chinese economy.
They see him differently
The Russian government is urgent to reach an agreement with President Xi and China's state-owned companies to close the hole in its energy exports caused by the disruption of its relations with EU countries and the sanctions they imposed on the Russian economy.
"For Russia, the new pipeline is a lifeline after losing most of the European gas market," said Alexander Korolev, a political scientist at UNSW in Sydney, Australia, according to AFP.
But although China is the world's largest importer of oil and gas, it does not appear particularly warm to shake hands with the Russians over the new pipeline, possibly because it is estimated to take 10 years to complete its construction and start transporting fuel, during which time there will likely be many changes in energy. China's attitude towards the project for years has been "if it happens, perfect, if not, we will make it," Alexei Gromov, head of the Russia-based Institute of Energy and Finance, told AFP.
Reuters reported that Russia's Gazprom, which is planned to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, launched a feasibility study in 2020 for the project and announced a legally binding 30-year supply memorandum with China's CNPC in September 2025.
Despite this, Power of Siberia 2 has been delayed due to disagreements over the price per unit. In last September's meeting with Xi, Putin said that the price of gas in the system would be based on a type of purchase similar to that applicable to Russian shipments to Europe.
China's pipeline gas imports have been steadily growing, reaching 59.4 million tons in 2025 and accounting for about 19% of domestic consumption, thanks to five existing pipelines bringing in gas from Central Asia, Russia, and Myanmar.
China has three pipelines that start from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, cross Kazakhstan, and then enter the country in the Xinjiang region, providing more than 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. In the south, the 793-kilometer Myanmar-China gas pipeline began operating in 2013 and was designed to carry 12 billion cubic meters per year.
Russia and China are also building another pipeline with a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters to transport gas from the Russian island of Sakhalin to the Pacific.
