Putin meets with China’s defence minister in Moscow

Putin meets General Li Shangfu less than a month after Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a three-day state visit to Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with China’s defense minister, underlining that Beijing is increasingly engrossed in Moscow, with which it has largely aligned its foreign policy in an effort to limit the influence of the United States and other Western democracies. Reduce.

Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu met General Li Shangfu on Sunday, less than a month after Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a three-day state visit to Moscow.

China has refused to criticize Russia’s military actions in Ukraine and blames the US and NATO for provoking Moscow. But China’s foreign minister said last week that China would not help Russia with arms, as the US and other Western allies feared.

Officially, China remains neutral in the conflict in Ukraine. However, Xi’s trip highlighted how China is increasingly becoming the senior partner in the relationship as it provides Russia with political cover and an economic lifeline during the Ukraine conflict.

In his opening remarks, Putin praised the general development of relations between Russia and China.

“We also actively work through the military departments, regularly exchange information that is useful to us, cooperate in the field of military-technical cooperation, and also conduct joint exercises in different theatres: in the Far East and in Europe and on the ground. sea ​​and land and air,” he said, according to the Kremlin.

Li said relations between the countries are “performing better than the military-political unions of the Cold War era. They are based on the principles of non-alignment and are very stable”.

“We have very strong ties. They surpass the military-political alliances of the Cold War era… They are very stable,” he said in translated remarks broadcast on Russian TV.

He added that ties between Russia and China have “already entered a new era”.