Russian President Vladimir Putin held a video call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in which he proposed further developing their strategic partnership just hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, and in recent months Putin has also described China as an “ally”.

Speaking from his Novo-Ogarevo residency outside Moscow, Putin waved at Xi and addressed Chairman Xi as his “dear friend”, saying he wanted to outline “new plans for the development of the Russian-Chinese comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation.”

“I agree with you that cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is based on a broad commonality of national interests and a convergence of views on what relations between major powers should be,” Putin told Xi, according to a Kremlin video of the meeting.

“We build our ties on the basis of friendship, mutual trust and support, equality and mutual benefit. These connections are self-sufficient, independent of domestic political factors and the current global situation."

Xi also addressed Putin as his “dear friend” and said relations were growing in strength and that he hoped ties would reach new highs, according to a live Russian translation of Xi’s words.

Trump has promised to be tough on China and to speak to Putin about ending the war in Ukraine. In remarks to reporters after his inauguration, Trump said Putin should make a deal to end the war because the conflict was “destroying” Russia.

Russia, fighting a war against NATO-supplied Ukrainian forces, and China, under pressure from a concerted US effort to counter its growing military and economic strength, have increasingly found common geopolitical cause.

Putin and Xi share a broad world view, which casts the West as decadent and in decline just as China challenges US supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.

“We jointly advocate building a more just multi-polar world order, and we are working in the interests of ensuring indivisible security in the Eurasian space and in the world as a whole,” Putin said.

“It is safe to say that foreign policy relations and joint work between Russia and China objectively play an important stabilising role in international affairs.”

The US casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat. Former US President Joe Biden has said the world’s democracies face a challenge from “autocracies” such as China and Russia.

Putin said China was Russia’s main trading partner, and that trade rose to $245 billion in 2024, according to Chinese statistics. Russia is ranked as China’s fifth largest trading partner, Putin said.

China is the largest consumer of Russian energy - and the biggest single oil export market for Russia, Putin said, adding that they would push ahead with cooperation on cooperating on fast neutron reactors and reprocessing nuclear fuel.