Putin to join Xi and Kim in Beijing for WWII anniversary event

28 August 2025 , 08:03

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Putin to join Xi and Kim in Beijing for WWII anniversary event

Vladimir Putin will make a rare trip abroad to join China as it marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. 

Mr Putin and Kim Jong Un will be around 26 foreign leaders at the event - but none are expected from Europe or the US.

It’s set to be Mr Kim’s first trip to China in six years.

Assistant foreign minister of China, Hong Lei, said Beijing would "warmly welcome" Mr Kim and that "maintaining, consolidating, and developing" relations between the two nations was a priority.

Mr Lei said the Russian president’s attendance "further demonstrates the high level of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era and declares the unity and solidarity between China and Russia".

He told Sky News: "Facing an international landscape fraught with both change and turmoil, China and Russia, as founding members of the UN and permanent members of the Security Council, will continue to uphold the authority of the United Nations and international fairness and justice."

This comes as Donald Trump said earlier this week he wants to meet with the North Korean leader.

Mr Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy appear no closer to agreeing on a date to meet, despite Mr Trump expressing hope that a summit was around the corner.

The US president hosted, firstly, his Russian counterpart in Alaska on August 15 and then met with the Ukrainian president, Mr Zelenskyy on August 18, hailing both talks as successful. 

"At the conclusion of the meetings, I called Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between Putin and Zelenskyy," Mr Trump said in the aftermath.

"After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself."

Mr Zelenskyy agreed and said that he would welcome talks in any form.

"If Russia proposes to the president of the United States a bilateral, and then we will see the result of bilateral, and then can be the trilateral,” he said.

However, a date and location for such a gathering have not been stated, despite German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stating that such a summit might only be weeks away.

Emma Davis

Deputy Editor