Russia and China jointly opposed "discriminatory" sanctions in global trade, Putin said in a written interview with China's official Xinhua news agency published on Saturday. Putin will be in China, Russia's biggest trading partner, from Sunday to Wednesday in a four-day visit that the Kremlin has called "unprecedented." Russia has been hammered by multiple rounds of Western sanctions after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia was a leading exporter of oil and gas to China and the two sides continued joint efforts to reduce bilateral trade barriers, he added. Wanted by the International Criminal Court over accusations of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, Putin last travelled in China in 2024.