Russia’s and Chinese Foreign Ministers discuss coronavirus outbreak

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi discussed cooperation in fighting the coronavirus outbreak in a phone call on Saturday, the Russian foreign ministry said.

According to the National Post, “the Russian side gave a high appraisal of the measures that China is taking to fight the spreading of the disease caused by the coronavirus,” the ministry said in a statement.

Reuters said that earlier on Saturday, President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to start evacuating Russian citizens from China due to the outbreak.

Russia’s decision to close its more than 4,000km-long land border with China to prevent the coronavirus outbreak risks damaging a relationship that has bloomed over the past six years as the Kremlin’s ties with the west have soured. The Financial Times reports that China is Russia’s largest trade partner, and bilateral volumes rose 25 per cent in 2018 to top $100bn. Both countries have pledged to double their bilateral trade volumes by 2024, helped by new infrastructure such as the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge completed in November and a railway bridge 450km downstream, which was completed last March and was designed to carry 20m tonnes of goods a year. “The disease itself will definitely affect [trade] volumes,” said Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, noting that China’s quarantine restrictions had limited mobility and might lead to reduced fuel imports from Russia.

Via National Post / Reuters / Financial Times