President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China met in a video summit and sought mutual support in their conflicts with the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They did not declare a formal alliance, but they called each other \u201cold friend,\u201d \u201cdear friend\u201d and \u201cesteemed friend,\u201d showing solidarity in the face of increased Western pressure over human rights and an ever-tighter geopolitical partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin said that he would attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in February, making him the first leader to confirm that he would go to an event that officials from the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other countries have boycotted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Points of agreement:<\/strong> Xi voiced support for Putin\u2019s demands for \u201csecurity guarantees\u201d from the West. Putin concurred with Xi\u2019s critical view of Western military activity in the Asia-Pacific region. The leaders discussed forming an \u201cindependent financial infrastructure,\u201d a Kremlin aide said, to reduce their reliance on Western banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Context:<\/strong> Western officials have been in talks about Russia\u2019s pressure on Ukraine. But Moscow is signaling that it has plenty of other friends, as with Putin\u2019s trip last week to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. Putin and Xi floated a possible three-way summit with India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quotable:<\/strong> \u201cBoth China and Russia face the same pressure from the United States,\u201d Cheng Xiaohe, a professor in Beijing, said. \u201cTherefore, the two countries need to support each other in diplomacy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China met in a video summit and sought mutual support in their conflicts with the West. They did not declare a formal alliance, but they called each other \u201cold friend,\u201d \u201cdear friend\u201d and \u201cesteemed friend,\u201d showing solidarity in the face of increased Western pressure over …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-186","category-188"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3824,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3823\/revisions\/3824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}