China and Russia want fair world order, won’t bend to ‘external factors’, Russian security chief says

Comments from Nikolai Patrushev come days after Xi-Putin meeting on SCO sidelines in Uzbekistan
Russian Security Council secretary and close Putin ally is in China for annual bilateral security cooperation meetings

Ukraine war

Kawala Xie

Published: 8:30pm, 19 Sep 2022

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China-Russia relations will not be affected by “external factors”, Russian security chief Nikolai Patrushev has said, with both sides calling for “a more just world order”.

The Sino-Russian will of building a fairer world order was being opposed by “the political elites of the collective West, who seek to impose their own bogus values to the detriment of the interests of the peoples of the world”, Patrushev said, according to a Tass report.

This came as Patrushev visited China for scheduled security consultations, less than a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping met Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan.

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China’s top diplomat and foreign policy supremo Yang Jiechi and Patrushev – secretary of the Russian Security Council and a close Putin ally – met in Fujian province on Monday for bilateral strategic security talks.

The high-level annual meetings came after Xi and Putin met in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on Thursday, marking the leaders’ first face-to-face talks since Russia invaded Ukraine – on what was President’s Xi’s first trip abroad since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.

Their last meeting was in Beijing, just ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

“China is willing to work with Russia to fully implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, continue to deepen the political mutual trust and strategic coordination between the two sides … and make greater contributions to safeguarding the common interests of the two countries and the security and stability of the world,” Yang said, according to a statement from Beijing’s foreign ministry.

01:54

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin speak in person for first time since Russia invaded Ukraine

Their meeting also touched on regional and international issues including the situation in Ukraine, Taiwan, Afghanistan and the Korean peninsula, the Russian Security Council said.

Both sides have also agreed to maintain a high level of military-technical cooperation.

Patrushev and Yang, a Chinese Politburo member and director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, discussed agreements reached during the Xi-Putin meeting, the Security Council said.

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Pan Dawei, director of the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said China was expected to push for Russia to take on a larger role in multilateral Eurasian organisations, as SCO member states in their Samarkand Declaration urged a bigger global role for the eight-strong bloc.

During their meeting in Uzbekistan, the Russian and Chinese top leaders pledged mutual support and deeper cooperation on issues of core interest. Putin also said he understood China’s “questions and concerns” over Ukraine.

Xi, however, made no mention of Ukraine in his remarks addressing the SCO summit, according to a Chinese readout.

China has so far refrained from condemning Russia’s military action on the former Soviet state, launched on February 24.

Pan said Russia had always shown understanding on issues on which China might feel constrained about taking a position. But the two countries had a “very high level of trust” in their strategic partnership, which would not be easily altered by specific issues.

Patrushev earlier declared that Moscow’s goals in military operations in Ukraine would be met, despite signs of setbacks in the northeast.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week his army had recaptured more than 8,000 sq km (3,090 square miles) of territory since the beginning of September.

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Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said that in a phone call shortly after the Chinese and Russian leaders met in early February, he warned Xi of investor fallout if China ignored Western sanctions to back Moscow over Ukraine.

However, there had been no signs yet of weapons assistance from China to Russia, Biden told US broadcaster CBS in a weekend interview.

Patrushev arrived in China on Sunday on a two-day visit for the annual security meetings under a mechanism set up in 2004. The last meeting was in Moscow in May 2021.