Global impact | Russia’s ‘priority’ friendship with China, beyond raises concerns over regional insecurity

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Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan for the second time in less than two months on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, making him the world leader with the most frequent contact with the isolated Russian strongman.

In May in Beijing, both leaders affirmed that each country was the other’s “priority partner” while lashing out at the United States, blaming Washington for everything from “extending nuclear deterrence” with allies, to developing high-precision non-nuclear weapons for potential “decapitation” strikes.

Within days of the meeting in Kazakhstan, Russia’s ambassador to China Igor Morgulov accused the West of “constant blackmailing and pressure”, adding that a unipolar world order which he said had long served the interests of the “collective West”, was “receding into the past.”

Shortly after, navies of both Russia and China began the “Joint Sea-2024” exercise in the South China Sea following an exercise that simulated the search and arrest of “suspicious vessels”.

Earlier on, both sides also conducted a joint military drill focused on cross-border terrorism in a river near the Heilongjiang bridge linking the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk with the Chinese city of Heihe.