Xi's visit to Moscow - long touted by the Kremlin as a show of support from its most powerful friend - featured plenty of demonstrative bonhomie. The two leaders referred to each other as dear friends, promised economic cooperation and described their countries' relations as the best they have ever been.
A joint statement included familiar accusations against the West - that Washington was undermining global stability and NATO barging into the Asia-Pacific region.
Putin praised Xi for a peace plan he proposed last month, and blamed Kyiv and the West for rejecting it.
We believe that many of the provisions of the peace plan put forward by China are in keeping with Russian approaches and can be used as the basis for a peaceful settlement when they are ready for that in the West and in Kyiv. We don't see a readiness from their side, so far, Putin said.
Xi said that China had an impartial position on the conflict, but he didn't mention it at all.
The White House said China's position was not impartial, and it urged Beijing to pressure Russia to withdraw from Ukraine's sovereign territory to end the war.
Putin's biggest display of diplomacy since he ordered his invasion of Ukraine a year ago was staged in Kyiv, where Japan's prime minister Fumio Kishida visited and met President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy.
Kishida toured Bucha on the capital's outskirts last year, which was tanned with dead last year by fleeing Russian troops, the latest world leader to make the gruelling overland journey to show solidarity with Ukraine. He laid a wreath in a church before observing a moment of silence and bowing.
The world was shocked to see innocent civilians killed in Bucha a year ago. Kishida said that they felt great anger at the atrocity upon visiting that very place.