Russia, fighting a 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 share a broad world view, which casts the West as decadent and in decline just as China challenges US supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.
“We jointly advocate building a more just multi-polar world order, and we are working in the interests of ensuring indivisible security in the Eurasian space and in the world as a whole,” Putin said.
“It is safe to say that foreign policy relations and joint work between Russia and China objectively play an important stabilising role in international affairs.”
The US casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat. Former US President Joe Biden has said the world’s democracies face a challenge from “autocracies” such as China and Russia.
Putin said China was Russia’s main trading partner, and that trade rose to US$245 billion in 2024, according to Chinese statistics. Russia is ranked as China’s fifth largest trading partner, Putin said.
China is the largest consumer of Russian energy – and the biggest single oil export market for Russia, Putin said, adding that they would push ahead with cooperation on cooperating on fast neutron reactors and reprocessing nuclear fuel.
