SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan — Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday for his “balanced” approach to the Ukrainian crisis and blasted Washington’s “ugly” policies at a meeting that followed a major setback for Moscow on the battlefield.
Speaking at the start of talks with Xi in Uzbekistan, Putin said he was ready to discuss unspecified “concerns” by China about Ukraine.
“We highly appreciate the well-balanced position of our Chinese friends in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said, facing Xi across a long table.
“We understand your questions and your concerns in this regard, and we certainly will offer a detailed explanation of our stand on this issue during today’s meeting, even though we already talked about it earlier,” he added.
Putin’s rare mention of Chinese worries comes as Beijing has been anxious about the impact of volatile oil prices and economic uncertainty due to the war in Ukraine that has dragged on for nearly seven months.
The two met on the sidelines of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization that includes India, Pakistan and four ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia. The security alliance was created as a counterweight to U.S. influence.
A Chinese government statement issued after the meeting didn’t specifically mention Ukraine, but said Xi promised “strong support” to Russia’s “core interests.” While the statement gave no details, Beijing uses “core interests” to describe issues such as national sovereignty and the ruling Communist Party’s claim to Taiwan, over which it is willing to go to war.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called Putin’s apparent admission “striking,” but said that China’s concerns are not surprising given its verbal gymnastics to avoid criticizing the Russian invasion.
“It is somewhat curious that President Putin would be the one to admit it and to admit it so openly,” Price said in Washington, D.C.
Speaking after the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the assessments of the international situation by Moscow and Beijing “fully coincide. We don’t have any differences.”
He added that both countries “will continue coordinating our actions, including at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly.”
Lavrov described the talks as “excellent,” saying they were “very businesslike and concrete, involving a discussion of tasks for various ministries and agencies.”
The Biden administration described the Putin-Xi talks as part of a rapprochement that has worried Washington.
’We’ve made clear our concerns about the depth of China’s alignment and ties with Russia,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that Thursday’s meeting “is an example of that alignment.”
Xi’s government, which said it had a “no-limits” friendship with Moscow before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, has refused to criticize Russia’s military actions. Beijing and India are buying more Russian oil and gas, which helps Moscow offset Western sanctions imposed over the invasion.
Observers say Russia will likely grow increasingly reliant on China as a market for its oil and gas as the West moves to establish a price cap on Russian energy resources and potentially cut their imports altogether.
In trying to strengthen an alliance with China, Moscow has strongly backed Beijing amid tensions with the U.S. that followed a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“We condemn the provocations of the U.S. and its satellites in the Taiwan…
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