Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Baku, Azerbaijan at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA) on October 15. Moscow noted that among the topics of discussion were relations with the United States, as well as the crisis in Ukraine and in the Middle East. There are reports of a possible trilateral meeting including the two presidents and President Trump at the upcoming APEC meeting in November in Shenzhen, China, although no announcements have been made yet regarding such a meeting. There will, however, be a bilateral meeting between President Trump and President Xi at the Summit, as well as an expected meeting between President Trump and President Putin.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that, during their meeting, the two sides “coordinated their positions on the next steps in China-Russia high-level exchanges and on international and regional hotspot issues of common concern, reaching a new consensus.” Minister Lavrov noted that the Russia-China relationship plays “an important stabilizing role” in the world, and that the two countries’ “positions on most regional, international and global issues either overlap or are very close.”