Raffaello Pantucci is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
When Russia hosted a meeting with senior Taliban leaders in Moscow this week -- after both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping sent junior deputies to an earlier G-20 leaders' meeting on Afghanistan -- it raised the question of whether this is part of a broader strategic plan for how Beijing and Moscow plan to work together on the world stage.
