Updated on: Sept 02, 2025 09:53 pm IST
Pakistan’s attempts to cozy up to Russia in an increasingly multi-polar world come when Delhi underlined its friendship with Moscow amid US tariff onslaught
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday thanked Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom he met in Beijing, for “all the support to Pakistan” and what he termed a “balancing act” in the South Asian region. “We respect your relations with India,” Sharif added, “But we also want to build very strong relations.”
As Putin nodded, Sharif said these relations would “supplementary and complementary”. He praised Putin as “a very dynamic leader”, in a short video shared by the the news outlet RT India.
Pakistan’s attempts to cozy up to Russia in an increasingly multi-polar world come when Delhi has underlined its decades-old friendship with Moscow — and effected a reset with China — particularly after the US under Donald Trump put penal trade tariffs on India for buying oil from Russia “despite the Ukraine war”.
Sharif’s mention of India comes also just a day after the Shanghai Coopration Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, at which PM Narendra Modi won a major diplomatic victory. In the joint declaration by the 10 members, the Pahalgam terror attack, for which India squarely blames Pakistan, was pointedly condemned.
Though Pakistan was not named in the document against terror — and Sharif was in fact among the signatories — the message was clear: a lot changed since June when the SCO did not mention Pahalgam.
Pakistan does have a thriving relationship with China, though. And it is among at least 26 world leaders, including Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who are in Beijing for a major military parade to be held on Wednesday, September 3.
Earlier, Pak army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and PM Shehbaz Sharif also met President Xi Jinping.
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