Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, met Wednesday ahead of this year's BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summits.

It is their second meeting in the past two months alone. They held talks in Moscow on May 8 before they joined other leaders at the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War, Russia's term for WWII.

Putin is set to travel to Beijing in September to attend the commemorative activities for the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

Putin is the foreign head of state with whom Xi has met most frequently since he took over the Chinese presidency in March 2013. By Wednesday's meeting, the two have sat down for bilateral talks as heads of state for 10 times, highlighting the distinctiveness of China-Russia relations.

During Xi's visit to Russia in May, Beijing and Moscow agreed to align China's Silk Road Economic Belt initiative and Russia's aspirations within the Eurasian Economic Union to jointly boost regional trade and interconnectivity.

Xi arrived in Ufa, capital of Russia's Bashkortostan Republic, earlier Wednesday to attend the seventh BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit and the 15th meeting of the SCO Heads of State Council.

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