Russia and China should stand firm in rejecting Western interference and defending each other's security interests, presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed in a video call on Wednesday.
Their conversation, eight days after Mr Putin spoke to United States President Joe Biden in a similar format, underscored how shared hostility to the West is bringing Moscow and Beijing closer together.
"At present, certain international forces under the guise of 'democracy' and 'human rights' are interfering in the internal affairs of China and Russia, and brutally trampling on international law and recognized norms of international relations," China's state-run Xinhua news agency quoted President Xi as saying.
"China and Russia should increase their joint efforts to more effectively safeguard the security interests of both parties," he said.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that President Xi had offered support to Vladimir Putin for his push to obtain binding security guarantees for Russia from the West, because he understood Moscow's concerns.
He said the pair also expressed their "negative view" of the creation of new military alliances such as the AUKUS partnership between Australia, Britain and the United States and the Indo-Pacific "Quad" of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
Under pressure
The call highlighted the ways in which Russia and China are drawing on each other for mutual support at a time of high tension in their relations with the West. China is under pressure over human rights and Russia is accused of threatening behaviour towards Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Mr Putin briefed President Xi on his conversation with Joe Biden, in which the US president warned Russia against invading Ukraine — which Moscow denies it is planning — and Mr Putin set out his demand for security pledges.
"A new model of cooperation has been formed between our countries, based, among other things, on such principles as non-interference in internal affairs and respect for each other's interests," Mr Putin told President Xi.
He said he looked forward to meeting President Xi at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February — an event that the White House last week said US government officials would boycott because of China's human rights "atrocities" against Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang.
The US, Britain, Canada and Australia are not sending political representatives to the Olympics over China's abuse of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Beijing and Moscow denounced the diplomatic boycott and Mr Putin on Wednesday said both leaders opposed "any attempt to politicise sport and the Olympic movement", a criticism Russia has repeatedly levelled at the West.
Russia was found to have used a state-backed doping program at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi and was banned from international competitions afterwards.
Russian athletes are allowed to compete as neutrals — without the Russian flag or anthem — if they can prove their doping record is clean.
Mr Putin has used Russia's partnership with China as a way of balancing US influence while striking lucrative deals, especially on energy. He and President Xi this year agreed to extend a 20-year friendship and cooperation treaty.
The Russian leader said bilateral trade was up 31 per cent in the first 11 months of this year to $123 billion, and the two countries aimed to exceed $200 billion in the near future.
He said China was becoming an international centre for production of Russia's Sputnik and Sputnik Light vaccines against COVID-19, with contracts signed with six manufacturers to make more than 150 million doses.
A file photo of Putin and Xi from 2019 Source: AAP
China, an authoritarian one-party state, responded with fury to being left out of the Joe Biden summit, branding US democracy a "weapon of mass destruction".
Beijing's diplomats overseas and its state-controlled media ramped up a propaganda blitz criticising Western democracy as corrupt and a failure.
Instead, they touted "whole-process people's democracy", aiming to shore up legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party, which has swung increasingly authoritarian under Xi.
