BEIJING (Dispatches) -- China pledged Tuesday to continue its strategic coordination with Russia, which has been under mounting Western pressure since it launched a military operation in Ukraine two months ago.
The Chinese foreign ministry in a statement said the country’s vice foreign minister Le Yucheng had given the assurance to the Russian ambassador to Beijing, Andrey Denisov, on Monday.
The Chinese diplomat also cited an almost 30% rise in China-Russia trade in the first quarter of 2022 as evidence of the “resilience and endogenous power” of cooperation between the two regional powers.
He called on the two sides to jointly promote the building of a new type of international relations and building a community with a shared future for mankind.
According to the statement, the two diplomats also discussed the conflict in Ukraine and the latest developments in Russia’s military operation in the former Soviet republic.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in late February announced what he called a “special military operation” aimed at “demilitarization” of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
The two regions had in the year 2014 declared themselves new republics, refusing to recognize Ukraine’s Western-backed government.
Western governments have slapped unprecedented sanctions against Moscow over its military operation in the neighboring country but stopped short of getting directly involved in the raging conflict.
Beijing says that sanctions are unilateral and not authorized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
Russia has maintained that it will halt the military operation if Kiev meets its conditions, including protection of its interests and nationals in Ukraine and prevention of the ex-Soviet republic’s accession to the Western military alliance of NATO.
China, the world’s second-biggest economy, has developed close ties with Russia in recent years. The two world powers issued a lengthy 5,000-word statement early in February against the expansion of NATO, calling the US-led military alliance a relic of the Cold War.