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 president of the United States. .
Putin greeted Xi and addressed President Xi as his “dear friend,” saying he wanted to outline “new plans for the development of the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between Russia and China.”
The Kremlin released a video of their meeting.
“I agree with you that cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is based on a broad community 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-sustaining, independent of internal political factors and the current global situation.”
Russia, waging war against NATO-supplied Ukrainian forces, and China, under pressure from a concerted US effort to counter its growing military and economic strength, have increasingly found common geopolitical cause.
Putin and Xi, who have rejected the perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial rule over China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline.
The United States views China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest threat as a nation-state. Former US President Joe Biden has said the world’s democracies are challenged by “autocracies” such as China and Russia.
(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Anastasia Teterevleva; editing by Andrew Osborn)