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The back-to-back visits are being seen as more than merely diplomacy. They carry a message from President Xi Jinping that China is a country everyone must engage with and not one that depends on any single power.

Putin is said to be in the "most challenging period" of his nearly 30 years in power amid claims he has become increasingly isolated and paranoid as the conflict grinds on

Xi Jinping's carefully choreographed hosting of Donald Trump (May 13-15) and Vladimir Putin (May 19-20) within the span of a single week was no coincidence. It was a calculated assertion of China's arrival as the indispensable pivot in global politics - a power sufficiently confident to engage both its principal strategic rival and its closest geopolitical partner with equal grandeur.

On the surface, Chinese leader Xi Jinping's back-to-back summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin looked pretty similar, with formal handshakes in Beijing's Tiananmen Square,

Observers noted one key difference between Vladimir Putin's welcome in Beijing and Donald Trump's arrival days earlier as it was suggested the US president was greeted by a less powerful official

Days after rolling out the red carpet for President Trump, Chinese leader Xi Jinping did the same for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing.

The visit comes amid the ongoing US-Iran conflict, with Pakistan playing a mediatory role between the two sides.