Russians, accustomed to living with constant unpredictability, have been stashing rubles for months in the drawers of their homes. Cash withdrawals have been so massive since the start of the year that the Bank of Russia has carried out a substantial upward revision of the financial system’s liquidity needs through the end of 2026. Internet shutdowns — and, by extension, disruptions to payment systems — ordered by the authorities for alleged “security reasons” have driven Russians to withdraw money from ATMs. Added to this, in a bid to raise revenue to fund the war against Ukraine, is a new bill that would tighten controls on cash payments to businesses.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea next week, state media said Friday, his first trip abroad this year after hosting a series of leaders as Beijing asserts itself as a global diplomatic superpower.

State broadcaster CCTV said Xi would visit from June 8 to 9 at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years.

Beijing is a vital source of political and economic support to North Korea, which is one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the world and under heavy international sanctions.

The upcoming meeting will be Xi’s first official overseas trip this year, and comes after he hosted back-to-back summits with US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin last month.

“China is meeting leaders from around the world, coordinating positions and playing a mediating role,” Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, told AFP.

“As China’s international standing rises, Beijing is likely seeking to draw Pyongyang more actively into its diplomatic orbit as a partner in advancing a more multilateral order.”

The two leaders will “exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern”, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a press briefing on Friday.

The visit was “an opportunity to promote the development” of bilateral relations and “make greater contributions to regional and even world peace”, Mao said.

Pyongyang depends on China for up to 95 percent of total trade and 85 percent of its exports, according to 2022 statistics from the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based think tank.

But North Korea has drawn closer to Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Pyongyang sending thousands of troops and weapons to support the war effort.

In return, analysts say North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology, food and energy, helping it circumvent sanctions over its banned nuclear programmes.

Xi’s choice of Pyongyang for his first overseas trip of 2026 is “a deliberate visual rebuttal to the prevailing read in Western capitals that Pyongyang had quietly migrated into Moscow’s orbit”, said Seong-Hyon Lee from the George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.

Managing the relationship

Xi last met Kim in September, when he invited the North Korean leader and Putin as guests of honour to a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the victory over imperial Japan in World War II.

In 2019, Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were welcomed to North Korea with great pomp and fanfare to celebrate the two countries’ “unbreakable friendship”.

Beijing’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Pyongyang in April that China and South Korea should “enhance coordination” on international and regional issues.

China’s interests include keeping an eye on North Korea’s nuclear programme, the advancement of which is “extremely rapid”, Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) told AFP.

“This aspect needs to be managed. If North Korea acts in a provocative and belligerent manner, it could trigger regional conflict, which could run counter to China’s interests,” Hong said.

Kim vowed an “exponential” increase in nuclear military capabilities on Wednesday as he visited a new atomic facility, Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

South Korea’s foreign ministry has said it hopes exchanges between North Korea and China contribute to peace and stability, and that China can play a constructive role.

Pyongyang has repeatedly shunned efforts by the South Korean government to improve relations, calling Seoul its most “hostile” adversary.

Analysts have viewed Xi’s recent diplomatic flurry as part of attempts to position China as a stable, strategic alternative to an unpredictable United States.

Traditional US allies, including Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron, have also come to Beijing.

However, Hong, of KINU, judged the chances that Xi might help broker a meeting between Trump and Kim as “very low”.

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is the most decorated and acclaimed of the championship chess players produced by the Soviet Union — the world’s largest country until its dissolution in 1991 — where chess was a deeply rooted national passion. A six-time world champion and winner of more than 160 tournaments, Karpov turned 75 on Saturday. He is living with serious health problems and is confined to Russia because, as a member of Vladimir Putin’s party in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, he is on the list of sanctioned individuals barred from traveling to the West. This is despite having spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — although, just days earlier, he had voted in favour of annexing the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.

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Poised to become the king of pipelines, with a total route of more than 2,600 kilometers (1,615 miles), Power of Siberia-2 is set to change two things forever: global natural gas flows and the already solid alliance between China and Russia. A few loose ends remain before it becomes reality, but after Tuesday’s meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, the road appears paved for the pipeline that will link the Yamal Peninsula ― one of the world’s largest gas fields ― with Beijing and Shanghai to come to fruition.

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China’s President Xi Jinping hailed an “invincible friendship” with Pyongyang on arrival in North Korea on Monday, his first trip abroad this year after hosting back-to-back summits in Beijing.

China, Washington’s chief geopolitical rival, has been North Korea’s main trading partner by far for decades and a key source of diplomatic and economic support for a country hit by multiple international sanctions.

Military officers lined a red carpet as an Air China plane carrying Xi arrived for his first visit since 2019, video from Xinhua showed.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his wife Ri Sol-ju welcomed Xi, who was accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan.

The two leaders shook hands, and children presented flowers to Xi and Peng, while a banner reading “We warmly welcome Comrade Xi Jinping” and hailing the two countries’ “unbreakable friendship” hung below Chinese and North Korean flags.

Xi makes the trip after hosting US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin separately in Beijing and as North Korea’s nuclear talks with Washington remain deadlocked.

The White House said last month that Xi and Trump “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearise North Korea” during their summit in Beijing.

However, Kim’s powerful sister said on the eve of Xi’s arrival that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme was “the line of no retreat”.

South Korea’s dovish President Lee Jae Myung said Monday Seoul should not give up on North Korea’s denuclearisation, adding that “North Korea is still producing nuclear material even at this very moment”.

Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University, told AFP that “Beijing probably has accepted North Korea as a nuclear state”, but Xi “will probably tell Kim that China wants stability more than anything”.

China has “always prioritised stability and is currently having to manage its relations and differences with the US”, Ku said.

‘Irreversible’ nuclear state

Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, also said Beijing is shifting towards “underwriting regime durability” rather than seeking to coerce North Korea into denuclearisation.

“China’s broader regional strategy benefits from a stable, heavily armed, and aligned buffer state that absorbs US and allied military bandwidth,” he told AFP.

North Korea has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state since Kim and Trump’s 2019 summit collapsed over the scope of denuclearisation and sanctions relief.

Kim has also been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Moscow after sending troops to fight alongside Russian forces.

Some analysts say the summit could be Xi’s way of countering Russia’s growing influence over North Korea, but DePaul’s Ku stressed that “overall, Moscow is not a major power like China”.

“Moscow-Pyongyang power relations are more equal than Beijing-Pyongyang; Moscow needs Kim for their war in Ukraine as much as Kim needs technology sharing and food from Russia,” she said.

In an article published on the front page of North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, Xi pledged closer cooperation.

“No matter how the times change or how the international situation evolves, the traditional friendship between China and North Korea is always invincible,” Xi wrote.

Xi last met Kim in September, when he invited the North Korean leader and Putin to a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Military alliance

Jun Sang-gab, 65, a South Korean tour guide who lives near the inter-Korean border, said he hopes that “North Korea opens its economy” and follows China’s development model.

“If they (the North) establish themselves economically, there won’t be any incidents like armed unification or war” on the Korean peninsula, he told AFP.

Trump has made little progress on North Korea, especially on the nuclear front, despite his earlier high-profile summits with Kim.

North Korea is also the only country with an official, binding military alliance with China.

North Korea could also serve as a useful counterweight to US partners in the region, including South Korea and Japan, analysts said.

Long-frosty China-Japan ties have deteriorated since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a security hawk, suggested last year that Tokyo might intervene militarily in any Chinese attempt to take self-ruled Taiwan.

“As China’s international standing rises, Beijing is likely seeking to draw Pyongyang more actively into its diplomatic orbit,” said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University.

By Kang Jin-kyu and Claire Lee

President Xi Jinping concluded a visit to North Korea on Tuesday, after meetings with Kim Jong Un that the Chinese leader said reached an “important consensus” on building ties.

AFP looks at what we know about the rare summit.

What happened?

Xi arrived in the North Korean capital Pyongyang on Monday for his first official visit to the diplomatically isolated nation since 2019.

He travelled with his wife and several other top officials for a two-day trip he said aimed to bring ties between the longtime partners to “new heights”.

The timing appeared significant, coming after Xi hosted a string of world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in Beijing.

State media images showed Xi and Kim beaming as they shook each other’s hand, with the Chinese leader receiving a lavish welcome ceremony with a red-carpet military salute and cheering crowds.

What were the outcomes?

Xi said he had reached “an important consensus with Kim on developing China-DPRK relations in the new era”, China’s Xinhua news agency reported, using North Korea’s official acronym.

The leaders agreed to put the two nations’ friendly relations “on a more solid basis”, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

Xi told Kim their countries should “should strengthen exchanges in diplomacy, law enforcement (and) the military” and expand economic cooperation, according to Chinese state media.

He also called for expanded economic cooperation, citing the recent reopening of border crossings and transport links.

Beijing has long been Pyongyang’s largest economic partner, with US and South Korean estimates indicating that China has accounted for almost all of North Korea’s annual foreign trade in recent years.

In March, flights and passenger train services between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed after a six-year hiatus due to pandemic-era border closures and their aftermath.

What about North Korea’s nukes?

Official readouts and state media reports have not said whether Xi and Kim discussed North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, for which Pyongyang languishes under international sanctions.

That is important because the White House said last month that the Chinese leader and Trump had “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearise North Korea” during their summit in Beijing.

Kim has repeatedly vowed never to give up his nuclear arsenal, and his powerful sister said before Xi’s visit that the programme was Pyongyang’s “line of no retreat”.

The absence of denuclearisation from official statements means the summit effectively “appeared to have been a forum where China granted Pyongyang’s rights to nuclear weapons”, Lee Ho-ryung of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses told AFP.

In return, it appears Kim “supported Beijing’s One-China principle regarding Taiwan”, she added, referring to the self-ruled island China claims as its own.

“Our party and government will fully support the policy and stand of the Chinese party and government to defend the core interests on the ‘one-China’ principle,” KCNA said.

How did Kim emerge from the talks?

Analysts noted that the summit took place as Kim enjoys enhanced global status after backing Russia with troops and munitions in its war with Ukraine.

Kim is “no longer just a recipient of aid, but a provider of critical military assets”, having “successfully leveraged his nuisance value into strategic relevance”, Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, told AFP.

Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the meeting reflected the convergence of “North Korea’s desire to cement its status as an indispensable strategic actor through its nuclear arsenal” and “China’s expanding ambitions to shape the Northeast Asian order”.

Besides Xi and Putin, Kim’s meetings with leaders from Belarus, Laos and Vietnam since last year have proven that North Korea is no longer such a diplomatic pariah, said Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University.

China and North Korea have a military alliance centred on a 1961 treaty obliging each side to come to the other’s aid in the event of an armed attack.

North Korea is the only country with which China has such a military agreement, though Pyongyang also signed a mutual defence treaty with Russia in 2024.

Beijing appears to aim “to offer economic incentives while monitoring North Korea to ensure it does not act against Beijing’s interests in the diplomatic and military spheres”, Hong said.

US President Donald Trump is due to visit China on May 14-15, where he is expected to meet leader Xi Jinping, after delaying an earlier summit because of the Iran war.

Here is what Beijing could be hoping to achieve:

What does China want?

Beyond diplomatic niceties and behind closed doors, Beijing will be looking for small, concrete achievements, analysts said, but will stay “realistically pragmatic” given Trump’s unpredictable nature.

China wants a broad reset in ties but knows this would be unlikely, said Benjamin Ho from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Beijing and Washington had been locked in a blistering trade war in which US levies on many Chinese goods reached an eye-watering 145 percent.

The tit-for-tat escalation cooled off after Trump and Xi agreed in October to a one-year truce, with experts saying Beijing’s baseline goal for the upcoming meeting would be to extend that agreement.

“What China needs is for Trump to follow through on his promise to engage, with at least a few concrete outcomes discussed at the highest level,” said Yue Su from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Beijing will be satisfied with “targeted” results such as limited tariff reductions that would justify a measured rollback of its own tariffs or export restrictions, she said.

What about the Iran war?

The topic of Iran will be “hard to avoid” in the Trump-Xi meeting, experts said, but “this is not a domain China is eager to engage deeply on”.

“The US is already raising pressure pre-summit on China by targeting its economic ties with Tehran,” said Lizzi Lee at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Trump warned last month he would hit China’s goods with a 50 percent tariff if it provided military assistance to Iran.

Beijing is a close partner of Tehran and has called US-Israeli strikes on Iran illegal, but it has also criticised Iranian attacks on Gulf countries and called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened.

However, China will not accept pressure from the United States to take action on Iran or Russia, over whom it “may have some influence but not decisive control”, the EIU’s Su said.

Beijing will also aim to avoid “additional complications” such as new US tariffs linked to China’s trade with Iran being introduced into an “already complex relationship”, Su said.

The Iran war will add “another layer of mutual pressure”, Lee said, but the real negotiating terrain remains in trade and investment.

What are China’s bargaining chips?

One of China’s key bargaining chips is its rare earths — metals crucial in the production of everything from smartphones to electric cars.

China’s dominance in the rare earths industry, from natural reserves and mining through processing and innovation, is the result of a decades-long drive.

It remains China’s strongest tool if meaningful concessions from the United States are needed, Su said.

Trump has shown that he “cares a lot about” rare earths, said Joe Mazur, a geopolitics analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China.

“I think that’s sort of something that the US doesn’t really have an answer to,” he said.

Mazur thinks that China is “going to line up… quick wins” before the visit, which may include buying more US agricultural products or Boeing jets.

China, he said, might hope “that will put Trump and his team in a positive frame of mind when they’re then discussing more complex, thornier issues”.

How has Beijing prepared?

China has hedged against instability brought about by Trump through diversifying trade towards Southeast Asia and the Global South, and strengthening regional ties, said the Asia Society’s Lee.

Beijing has also sharpened its legal and regulatory toolbox, she said, and “has a potentially more extensive playbook”, as seen in the recent blocking of tech giant Meta’s acquisition of AI firm Manus.

However, a lot of these measures, including diversification of energy imports, a push towards electrification and tech self-sufficiency, predate Trump’s second term, Mazur said.

“If this meeting goes exceptionally well, it’s not going to change the trajectory that China’s on,” he said.

“This push to America-proof the Chinese economy is going to continue, no matter what happens.”

Is China confident?

Beijing will enter talks “cautiously confident”, Lee said.

It believes it can absorb pressure better now and is more comfortable playing “a long game” than Trump, who is facing midterm election pressure, she said.

A visit to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin is also on the cards, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — who met Xi in April — saying it would happen in the first half of this year.

A back-to-back visit would send the message that “just because he (Xi) had a good meeting with Trump, it doesn’t mean that Chinese support for Russia is going anywhere”, Mazur told AFP.

“That relationship is rock solid.”