Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday met Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of commemorative events in Beijing, where he expressed Islamabad’s desire to deepen its relationship with Moscow while acknowledging Russia’s longstanding ties with New Delhi.
“We respect your relations with India, they are perfectly fine,” Sharif told Russian President Putin. “But we also want to build very strong relations with Russia, which would be supplementary and complementary to the progress and prosperity of the region.”
During the meeting, Sharif described the Russian President as a 'very dynamic leader' and conveyed appreciation for what he called Russia’s 'balancing act' in South Asia. He also thanked Moscow for its continued support to Pakistan across various domains.
The meeting between the two leaders took place in Beijing, where both are attending commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War.
The Sharif-Putin engagement comes at a time when Pakistan is seeking to diversify its foreign policy partnerships in a shifting global order, even as India continues to highlight its decades-old strategic relationship with Moscow.
In recent years, New Delhi has also sought to recalibrate its ties with Beijing, particularly after facing US sanctions during the Trump administration for its continued oil trade with Russia following the Ukraine conflict.
Sharif’s remarks referencing India came just a day after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi secured a diplomatic gain.
In a joint declaration issued by the 10 member states, the recent terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which India attributes to Pakistan-based groups was strongly condemned.
While Pakistan was not named explicitly in the statement, Sharif was among the signatories, signalling a marked shift from the SCO summit in June, where the incident had gone unmentioned.
Addressing the summit, Modi reiterated India’s longstanding position that terrorism poses a threat not only to individual nations but to humanity at large.
He also called for a zero-tolerance approach to terrorism, warning against double standards in its treatment.