Though Putin’s visit is more symbolic and short on concrete proposals, the two countries are sending a clear message to the west.

“At this moment, they’re reminding the west that they can be defiant when they want to,” Joseph Torigian, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, told the Associated Press.

Experts say China and Russia’s relationship with each other offers strategic benefits, particularly at a time when both have tensions with Europe and the US.

Hoo Tiang Boon, who researches Chinese foreign policy at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said: “They see very little incentive for compromise.”

“Even if China compromises on a range of issues, including cutting back support on Russia, it’s unlikely that the US or the west will drastically change their attitude to China as a competitor,” he added.

Lying just a few hundred kilometres from the border with Russia, Harbin has long served as a key hub for cross-border trade and cultural exchange.

The Russian president will attend the opening ceremony of a Russia-China trade expo on Friday, Moscow’s state news agency Tass reported, and will be accompanied by Han Zheng, China’s vice president.

Putin will also hold a press conference with Russian media later in the day.

Putin is flanked by a large trade delegation, which includes finance minister Anton Siluanov and central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina.

Others include the heads of Russia’s largest banks – Sberbank CEO German Gref and VTB chief Andrei Kostin – billionaire Oleg Deripaska, top oil producer Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and liquefied natural gas giant Novatek’s boss, Leonid Mikhelson.

The Russian leader’s two-day to China trip comes as his country’s forces have pressed an offensive in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region that began last week in the most significant border incursion since the full-scale invasion began, forcing almost 8,000 people to flee their homes.

“This is Putin’s first trip after his inauguration, and it is therefore intended to show that Sino-Russian relations are moving up another level,” independent Russian political analyst Konstantin Kalachev told AFP. “Not to mention the visibly sincere personal friendship between the two leaders.”

China has strengthened its trade and military ties with Russia in recent years as the US and its allies imposed sanctions against both countries, particularly against Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine.

The west says China has played a crucial role in helping Russia withstand the sanctions and has supplied key technology which Russia has used on the battlefield in Ukraine. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but has backed Moscow’s contentions that Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine by the west, despite Putin’s public avowals of his desire to restore Russia’s century-old borders as the reason for his assault.

China, once the junior partner of Moscow in the global Communist hierarchy, remains by far the most powerful of Russia’s friends in the world.

Some images are coming through on the wires of Putin arriving in Harbin and being greeted at the airport by Chinese officials.

The relationship between Russia and China has set an “example of peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation between major powers” that “contributes to regional and global peace, stability, and prosperity,” China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said in an editorial on Friday.

It praised the relationship as “unique in the history of modern international relations”, adding:

The two countries are not military-political allies, but rather represent a new model of major power relations characterized by non-alignment, non-confrontation, and not targeting any third country.

It also wrote that the two countries: “jointly oppose zero-sum games and Cold War mentality, group politics, confrontational blocs, dividing the world based on ideology and political systems, and confrontational policies and interference in other countries’ internal affairs.”

China has however come under increasing pressure from the west not to supply Russia with goods that could be used in its war against Ukraine.

Last year, bilateral trade hit a record $240.1bn, and there are signs that even more goods – including dual-use technology that could be used in the war effort – are reaching Russia from China via third countries.

Even without direct arms shipments to Russia, western observers say China’s economic and political support for Russia has been a lifeline since February 2022. On Thursday, Putin said he was “grateful” to China for its efforts to try to resolve “the Ukraine crisis”.

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