MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin held a video call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in which he proposed further developing their strategic partnership just hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th U.S. president.
Putin waved at Xi and addressed Chairman Xi as his “dear friend”, saying he wanted to outline “new plans for the development of the Russian-Chinese comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation.”
The Kremlin released a video of their meeting.
“I agree with you that cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is based on a broad commonality of national interests and a convergence of views on what relations between major powers should be,” Putin told Xi.
“We build our ties on the basis of friendship, mutual trust and support, equality and mutual benefit. These connections are self-sufficient, independent of domestic political factors and the current global situation.”
Russia, waging war against NATO-supplied Ukrainian forces, and China, under pressure from a concerted U.S. effort to counter its growing military and economic strength, have increasingly found common geopolitical cause.
Putin and Xi, who have pushed back against the perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline.
The United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat. Former U.S. President Joe Biden has said the world’s democracies face a challenge from “autocracies” such as China and Russia.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Anastasia Teterevleva; editing by Andrew Osborn)
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