MOSCOW, September 13. /TASS/. Russian and Chinese Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who will meet on September 15 on the sidelines of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, will discuss the current international problems, Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov said on Tuesday.

"Bearing in mind the specifics of the current international situation, this meeting, naturally, has a special importance," he said. "The leaders are planned to discuss both the bilateral agenda and key regional and international topics."

According to Ushakov, this meeting is a "long-awaited personal contact," the second one over the period of the coronavirus pandemic. Their first personal meeting took place in Beijing, when Putin attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in February, Ushakov recalled, adding that "the leaders maintain telephone contacts, exchange messages."

The Kremlin aide anticipated that Putin and Xi "will give a positive assessment to the unprecedented high level of the trust-based bilateral strategic partnership" between their countries. Moscow and Beijing "stand for a fair, democratic and multipolar world order based on international law and the central role of the United Nations," he said, adding that among the topics will be Ukraine and Taiwan.

Apart from that, in his words, Putin and Xi will discuss the SCO’s activities and its role in international affairs. Among the bilateral topics, Ushakov cited the development of trade and economic cooperation. "In the current difficult situation, amid the Western sanctions, this cooperation is demonstrating sustainability and continues to develop and gain momentum," he stressed.

He recalled that bilateral trade reached a record-breaking level of 140 billion US dollars in 2021 and grew by a fourth in the first seven months of 2022, to amount to 93 billion US dollars. "It gives grounds to expect bilateral trade to break another record," he said. "Strategic cooperation is being expanded in the energy, investment and industrial sectors. Pipeline supplies of Russian oil and gas to China are increasing, there are new achievements in the sphere of the development of cross-border transport infrastructure, work is continued to improve and ensure independency of the bilateral financial infrastructure."