Russia Seeks to Balance Ties With US, China: Official

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk says that Moscow would seek to balance its relationship between Washington and Beijing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 21, 2023. Pavel Byrkin/SPUTNIK/ AFP via Getty Images

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 state-run media said that Overchuk also expressed hope that the strategic partnership would reach new heights in the coming years as the two powers continued to entwine their futures.

Similarly, Overchuk said that Russia had, in large part, been able to resist the power of Western sanctions over its war on Ukraine because of the support of China, which has greatly expanded purchases of Russian energy and other goods to fill the void.

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.

President Donald Trump has thus far encouraged the rapprochement with Russia, saying that the United States would work towards fully reintegrating Russia into the global economic and diplomatic space.

Moscow’s recalcitrant approach to Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine has dampened those efforts, however, with Trump on one occasion threatening sanctions and tariffs on Russia if the Eurasian power did not comply more fully with cease-fire efforts.

“Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large-scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached. To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now before it is too late. Thank you!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on March 7, partially in capital letters.

The Trump administration may nevertheless be open to the idea of a more integrated Russia and China as Washington seeks to bring both powers to the table on other issues, including military spending and nuclear proliferation.

“At some point, when things settle down, I’m going to meet with China, and I’m going to meet with Russia, in particular those two, and I’m going to say ’there’s no reason for us to be spending almost a trillion dollars on the military,'” Trump said last month.

How Washington will manage the increasing cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is an open question. The two powers have increasingly become antagonistic towards the United States in recent years, working directly with communist authorities in North Korea and the Islamist regime in Iran to undermine U.S. interests abroad.