China-Mongolia-Russia Agreement on Power of Siberia 2 Could Reroute Energy Trade

Bolor Lkhaajav

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China recently hosted the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Tianjin, gathering heads-of-state and high-level representatives. Mongolian President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa participated in the summit, representing Mongolia as an observer state — a status that no longer exists as the SCO reformatted how it labels partners after the recent summit. On the sidelines of the SCO, Gazprom and CNPC signed a legally binding MOU on the trilateral construction of the Power of Siberia 2, a planned gas pipeline from Soyuz Vostok, which has potential to alter energy trade.

During his speech at the SCO Summit, Khurelsukh underscored Mongolia’s commitment to peace, multilateralism, and regional integration. Marking Ulaanbaatar’s active engagement in regional and global multilateral platforms, Khurelsukh emphasized Mongolia’s initiation to host the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in November 2026 and welcomed China and other partners to participate.

But, more importantly, Ulaanbaatar’s dealings with its two giant neighbors – Russia and China – happen at their trilateral summit, held on the sidelines of multilateral events like the SCO Summit.

On September 2, the day after the SCO Summit closed, Mongolia, China, and Russia convened their seventh trilateral leaders’ summit in China. As the host, China’s President Xi Jinping chaired the summit. He offered a three-point proposal on advancing China-Russia-Mongolia trilateral cooperation. First, Xi called for the three countries to cement political trust and thus the political will for trilateral cooperation. Second, he spoke of deepening mutually beneficial cooperation, particularly through infrastructure: “taking physical connectivity as a key direction, the three countries should actively promote their cross-border infrastructure and energy projects, and make such cooperation more substantive.”

During the summit, Khurelsukh attributed “particular importance to the joint projects in such areas as Economic Corridor infrastructure development, transport, logistics, energy and trade.”