Putin<\/a> attended the two previous forums, in 2017 and 2019, and the Kremlin said in September he had accepted an invitation to the forum and for talks with Xi.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Russian leader is not known to have gone abroad since the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin is expected to visit Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, before the Beijing meeting. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor China are members of the ICC, which was established to prosecute war crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BRI is a plan for global infrastructure and energy networks that China launched a decade ago to connect Asia with Africa and Europe through land and maritime routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But critics see the plan – billed as recreating the ancient Silk Road to boost global trade – as a tool for China to spread its geopolitical and economic influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin, in a message to Xi this month, said their talks would deepen Russian-Chinese ties “for the benefit of our friendly peoples, in interests of ensuring security and stability on the Eurasian continent and throughout the world”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China had signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with more than 150 countries and more than 30 international organizations, the foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italy, the only Group of Seven country to sign up, has criticised the 2019 decision by a previous government to join the BRI scheme, with its foreign minister recently saying trade between Italy and China had not improved.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beijing, Oct 11 (Reuters) – China will host its third Belt and Road Forum next week, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday, a President Xi Jinping signature event that President Vladimir Putin is due to attend on a rare trip abroad. The conference in Beijing on Oct. 17-18 marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":7200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,81,396,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-china","category-latest","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}