The Kremlin is seeking to balance its relationship with the United States alongside its military and economic partnership with communist China, according to a senior Russian official.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk made the remarks during an address on March 27 at the Boao Forum in China’s Hainan Province.
“As to the relationship between Russia, China, and the United States, we should not develop a relationship with one other country at the expense of another and vice versa,” Overchuk said, according to a translation of the comments first reported by Bloomberg.
Overchuk added that Moscow was eager to continue working with Beijing to implement and expand a strategic agreement signed by the two powers back in 2023.
That agreement laid out a comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Russia, bringing the two nations into a de facto alliance. As part of that agreement, Moscow and Beijing have deepened their economic, diplomatic, and military ties, including by increasing their joint military exercises worldwide.
That agreement was also at least partially aimed at undermining U.S. hegemony in international affairs. Just one day before its signing, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged that China and Russia would create a “multipolar world order” to replace the “rules” of the current U.S.-led international order.
Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, a high-ranking official on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Politburo Standing Committee, said he had met with Overchuk twice already this year and that the two would continue developing relations between their governments.
Overchuk agreed with that sentiment, saying he would continue to seek ways of expanding cooperation with China.
“There’s a desire on both sides to explore opportunities for expanding those ties because both nations are experiencing outside pressures,” Overchuk said. “And naturally we look for ways of how to cooperate and work together to improve the living standard of people in our countries.”
The comments come as Moscow seeks to reopen economic and diplomatic ties with the new administration in Washington and to discourage American and allied arms shipments to Ukraine.
