MOSCOW • Chinese President Xi Jinping supported Russian President Vladimir Putin in his push to get Western security guarantees precluding NATO’s eastward expansion, the Kremlin said Wednesday after the two leaders held a virtual summit.

Putin and Xi spoke as Moscow faces heightened tensions with the West over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine’s border. In recent weeks, Western nations engaged in diplomatic efforts to prevent a possible invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied harboring plans to storm its neighbor. Putin, meanwhile, demanded guarantees that NATO will not expand to Ukraine or deploy troops and weapons there. He told Xi on Wednesday about “mounting threats to Russia’s national interests from the U.S. and the NATO bloc, which consistently move their military infrastructure close to the Russian borders,” Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said.

The Russian leader stressed the need to hold talks with NATO and the U.S. on legally binding security guarantees, according to Ushakov. Xi responded by saying he “understands Russia’s concerns and fully supports our initiative to work out these security guarantees for Russia,” Ushakov said.

He said Moscow’s proposals have been passed on to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, who visited Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov.

In recent years, China and Russia have increasingly aligned their foreign policies to counter U.S. domination of the international economic and political order. Both have faced sanctions — China over its abuses against minorities, especially Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, and for its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and Russia for annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and over the poisoning and imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Beijing and Washington also remain at odds over trade, technology and China’s military intimidation of Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.

Russia’s relations with the U.S. sank to post-Cold War lows after it annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s east. Tensions reignited in recent weeks after Moscow massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s border, a move Ukraine and the West feared may indicate plans for a new invasion.

Moscow has denied that it plans to attack Ukraine and in turn blamed Ukraine for its own military buildup in the country’s war-torn east. Russian officials alleged that Kyiv might try to reclaim the areas controlled by the rebels. It is within that context that Putin has pressed the West for guarantees that NATO will not expand to Ukraine or deploy its forces there.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures during his videoconference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, right on the screen, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have held a video call to discuss bilateral relations and international affairs. The summit Wednesday comes amid heightened tensions between Moscow and the West over a Russian troop buildup near Ukrainian borders that is stoking fears of a possible invasion. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Mikhail Metzel