Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi held hands as they greeted Xi Jinping at a summit in China on Monday, 1 September.
They walked side-by-side as they met before the second day of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in which 20 leaders across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East gathered for a powerful show of Global South solidarity.
The Russian president arrived in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Sunday for a rare four-day visit to Moscow’s largest trading partner and was met with a warm welcome by top-ranking city officials.
Not long after arrival, Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a sideline meeting in which they discussed recent contacts between Moscow and Washington, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told Russian media without elaborating further.