The US is worried about Sino-Russian relations as Putin mentioned Xi’s visit

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is concerned about increasing accommodation between China and Russia after Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the “new frontier” in relations with Beijing and signaled that Chinese President Xi Jinping would do so, the State Department said on Wednesday. Visit his country.

Word of Xi’s visit comes as Washington said China was considering providing weapons for Russia’s war in Ukraine, a move that would threaten to escalate the conflict into a confrontation between Russia and China on one side and Ukraine and the US-led NATO military alliance. On the other hand.

Putin welcomed China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, to the Kremlin on Wednesday, telling him that bilateral trade is better than expected and could soon reach $200 billion annually, up from $185 billion in 2022.

“We are waiting for the President of the People’s Republic of China to visit Russia, we agreed on that,” Putin told Wang, referring to Xi.

“Everything is advancing and developing. We are reaching new heights,” Putin said.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wang’s visit to Russia on the eve of the first anniversary of the war is further evidence of Beijing’s alliance with Moscow.

“We are concerned because these two countries share a vision,” Price told a news briefing. “It is a vision … of an era in which big countries can bully small countries, borders can be redrawn by force, an era in which they can be corrected,” he said.

“We haven’t yet seen the People’s Republic of China provide lethal aid to Russia, but we don’t think they’ve taken it off the table either,” Price added.

The Russian Tass news agency quoted Wang – who held a separate meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – as saying that China “will firmly adhere to an objective and impartial stance and play a constructive role in the political settlement of the crisis” in Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it welcomed China’s more active role in resolving the conflict and said it appreciated China’s “balanced approach”. But the ministry said in a separate statement that Lavrov and Wang did not discuss an announced Chinese peace plan.

For Putin, the great powers’ support for China amid the biggest confrontation with the West since the height of the Cold War allows him to cast a light on Russia’s isolation in the West as a tilt towards Asia.

Wang told Putin that the relations between the two countries have withstood a volatile international situation.

The China-Russia relationship, through an interpreter, was not directed against any third party, Wang said, but similarly “will not be subject to pressure from third parties” — a clear blow to the United States.

“Together we uphold multipolarity and democracy in international relations,” Wang told Putin.

When Xi met Putin face-to-face before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, they sealed a “borderless” partnership that has caused alarm in the West.

XI and Putin

Now more dependent than ever on Beijing, Russia is a junior partner to a rising China, which already drives many 21st-century technologies.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday warned Wang of the consequences if China provides lethal support for a Russian invasion, something Beijing has denied doing.

After Blinken’s warnings, which he gave without evidence, China said the United States was not in a position to make demands.

Xi has stood by Putin during the conflict in Ukraine, resisting Western pressure to isolate Moscow. Sino-Russian trade has soared since the invasion, and China is Russia’s largest buyer of oil, one of Moscow’s main sources of state treasury revenue.

Reporting by Reuters. Editing by Gareth Jones, Michael Martina, David Ljungren, and Josie Kao

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.