“We firmly support each other on issues concerning each other’s core interests and safeguarding the dignity of each country,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin, according to reports in the Chinese state news media.
There is still plenty of friction between Russia and China, onetime adversaries that share a land border stretching more than 2,600 miles, over matters like Siberian logging and history. But on trade, security and geopolitics they are increasingly on the same page, forming a bloc trying to take on American influence as both countries’ confrontations with the United States deepen.
The two countries do not have a formal alliance. But Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin that “in its closeness and effectiveness, this relationship even exceeds an alliance,” according to a Kremlin aide, Yuri V. Ushakov, who briefed reporters in Moscow on the meeting after it ended.
The two leaders discussed forming an “independent financial infrastructure,” Mr. Ushakov said, to reduce their reliance on Western banks and their vulnerability to punitive measures from the West. And they floated a possible three-way summit with India, evidence of their broader geopolitical ambitions; Mr. Putin traveled to New Delhi to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week.
“A new model of cooperation has been formed between our countries — one based on foundations like noninterference in domestic affairs and respect for each others’ interests,” Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi in televised remarks.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/world/asia/china-russia-summit-xi-putin.html
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