Moscow has no military alliance with Beijing and doesn’t plan on forming such a bloc, Vladimir Putin has said. Yet, Russia will still help its ‘strategic partner’ enhance its defensive capabilities.
Asked about Russia’s military and technical cooperation with China, which a Japanese journalist described as a potential indicator of a looming military alliance between the two neighbors, Putin said it is not Moscow and Beijing that seek to form a military bloc in East Asia but the US and its allies, Japan and South Korea.
Russia and China, on the contrary, have no such plans, he said, and criticized the approach taken by Washington in the region as “counterproductive.” An absence of a formal military alliance does not mean that the two “strategic partners” won’t cooperate in the field of defensive technologies, according to Putin. Russia continues to help China develop its own missile early warning system.
That said, “the missile early warning system is a purely defensive one.”
This system does not push a nation to any form of aggression but only helps it defend its territory.
Besides, such a development would not significantly affect the regional or global balance of power as China is capable of creating such a system on its own, Putin argued. Russia only helps to develop it faster.
