Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, likely had more than vodka shots and gifts of ice cream to show for their warming relationship after their planned meeting this weekend on the sidelines of a developing nations' summit in India.
Recent months have seen greater security cooperation between Russia and China as they find common ground against the U.S. The neighboring giants last month held their first joint naval drill in the South China Sea and both have condemned U.S. plans to deploy a U.S. missile shield in South Korea. A Russian general said last week the military was working with China to counter an expansion of U.S. missile defenses, which they see as upsetting the balance between the three nuclear powers.
"The fact that both countries started to talk about joint actions on the military level is a very serious development," said Vasily Kashin, a senior fellow of Russian Academy of Science's Far Eastern Studies Institute. "The threat from U.S. missile defense pushes both China and Russia closer to each other. For Russia and China, the policy of containment is the containment of the U.S. first of all."