China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday made wide-ranging pledges to expand their bilateral partnership, drawing a sharper division between their nations and the West on the second day of Xi’s state visit to Moscow.

Outlining an economic order in line with their shared goal of counterbalancing the US and its western allies, the two leaders signed 14 agreements focusing mainly on economic collaboration. And Putin said that Russia was ready to meet China’s growing demand for energy, suggesting that Beijing would continue to provide Russia with a huge market for its exports, bolstering the Russian economy against biting western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.

On the same day, Japan’s Prime Minister made an unannounced visit to Kyiv, underscoring his alignment with much of the West in supporting Ukraine and highlighting the division between Asia’s two largest economies.

China’s foreign ministry responded to Kishida’s visit by saying that Japan should “help de-escalate the situation instead of the opposite”.

While Xi and Putin had made only cursory public references to the war in Ukraine on Monday, China’s leader used a joint appearance with Putin on Tuesday to call again for peace talks to resolve the war, repeating a position that Kyiv’s western allies have rejected as unworkable until Russia withdraws its troops.

“The parties note that relations between Russia and China, while not constituting a military-political alliance similar to those set up during the Cold War, are superior to this type of interstate cooperation,” the two sides said after the summit. These relations “do not constitute a bloc, do not have a confrontational nature and are not directed against third countries”, they said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Kyiv had suggested to China that Beijing join a Ukrainian peace formula to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but that it was still waiting for an answer. He made the remark during a joint briefing in Kyiv with Kishida.

Memorial targeted Russian security forces raided the homes of former employees of the Nobel Prize-winning human rights group Memorial on Tuesday and took some of them in for questioning, the group said, in a move denounced by one opposition party as an assault on dissent.

New York Times News Service and Reuters