Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a meeting in Beijing, China, on September 2, 2025. Photo: Pool via Reuters

Russia’s Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed an agreement to increase annual gas supplies to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline as well as via the Far Eastern Route, Russia’s RIA agency reported on Tuesday (September 2, 2025).

Reuters reported last month that China was seeking to buy more Russian gas through an existing pipeline as talks between the two countries have failed to make progress on building a second link.

The agreements were signed during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China, where he is due to attend a military parade on Tiananmen Square on Wednesday (September 3, 2025) marking the end of World War II after Japan’s formal surrender.

RIA, citing Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller, said that Gazprom and CNPC have agreed to increase supplies to 44 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year from 33 bcm a year.

Additionally, the two have agreed to increase gas supplies via the Far Eastern route to 12 bcm from the 10 bcm.

Mr. Miller also said that a legally binding memorandum has been signed for the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to China and the Soyuz Vostok transit gas pipeline through Mongolia.

“Gazprom and CNPC also signed today a new memorandum on strategic cooperation, which reflects a new stage in our work with CNPC on new projects,” Mr. Miller said.

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Japan Association for Recovery and Repatriation of War Casualties members at the Maynamati war cemetery.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Japanese officials in Bangladesh are preparing the bodies of 23 soldiers who died during the Second World War to return them home after more than 80 years, exhumation teams said on Monday (November 25, 2024).

The bodies were exhumed from Bangladesh’s Maynamati war cemetery, near Comilla, where more than 700 people from multiple nations killed during the war were buried.

The government-backed Japan Association for Recovery and Repatriation of War Casualties is organising the recovery work to return the dead to Tokyo, the Embassy of Japan said in a statement.

The organisation says it seeks to return remains of Japanese war dead, especially from regions that saw heavy fighting during the war — including the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, and Myanmar.

Japan fought in China and Burma — today, Myanmar — against Allied forces, and tried to invade British-ruled India, of which Bangladesh was then a part.

Sajjad Ali Zahir, a retired Bangladeshi army colonel who was part of the eight-member excavation team, said the identity of the bodies would first be checked.

“The remains will undergo DNA matching, and once the process is complete, authorities will hand them over to the families,” Mr. Zahir said, adding the men were expected to be “buried with military honours”.

Eight decades on, the remains are in an “extremely fragile state”, he added, saying they included both full skeletons as well as “skull fragments and bones”.