Multiple people reportedly walked out of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech during his visit to Beijing with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
According to Reuters, European delegates, such as former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre, walked out of the room just before Putin started speaking.
The Russian leader arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to meet with Xi, his closest major ally, and to deliver remarks at the third summit of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese president’s flagship project to increase his country’s influence abroad and build energy and infrastructure routes between Asia, Europe, and Africa.
During his speech, Putin praised Xi for the success of the Belt and Road Initiative, adding that China’s success was “really important for us.”
“Russia and China, like most countries of the world, share the desire for equal, mutually beneficial co-operation in order to achieve universal sustainable and long-term economic progress and social well-being, while respecting the diversity of civilization and the right of each state to its own development model,” the Russian president said.
In an interview with Chinese state media, Putin also said that Xi “calls me his friend, and I call him my friend.”
“Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are,” he added. “Therefore, if I now praise Chairman Xi Jinping, I will feel somehow uncomfortable—it’s like I’m praising myself. So I’ll try to be objective.”
Putin went on to describe his Chinese counterpart as “one of the recognized world leaders” who does not “make a momentary decision based on some current situation, he assesses the situation, analyzes and looks into the future.”
This comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest order for Putin in March for launching an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said that Russia would soon lose the war and Putin would die within ten years.
“Putin will not live for so many years,” Zelensky said at the time. “At the pace at which he is fighting with us, he didn’t fight [like that] in Syria.
“He won’t withstand it. He won’t live for 30 more years. He will die – this is completely clear,” he continued. “But he won’t survive ten years either. He’s not the same figure anymore.”
