“Our Chinese colleagues asked us to do without a handshake.
We did not find anything criminal in this.
And they agreed to it.
The president knew that it was not necessary to extend a hand to the chairman of the PRC, ”RIA Novosti quotes him.
Kitaev also added that this situation is not the first time in the past, for example, the German side also asked to refuse to shake hands during the meeting between Putin and Angela Merkel, when she met with him as German chancellor.
“We got out of the situation by giving her a bouquet of flowers,” he said.
The head of the protocol emphasized that there are no political signals in this decision.
Earlier, the press secretary of the Russian leader Dmitry Peskov called the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing warm and constructive.