China and Russia have reinforced in the past years diplomatic and economic cooperation, and the rapprochement between the two countries has increased since the invasion of Ukraine.
Beijing, however, insists that it remains impartial toward the conflict.
Beijing is Moscow's largest trading partner. According to Chinese customs data, bilateral trade reached a record $190 billion last year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the West saw Russia and China as "adversaries" that posed what he called an existential threat to the West's "dominance."
"As evidenced by statements made at the recently concluded G7 summit in Japan, the West views Russia and China as strategic adversaries posing almost an existential threat to its dominance," Lavrov said.
The leaders of both countries are "brought together more by shared grievances and insecurities than by shared goals", Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution and a former White House official, told AFP.
"They both resent and feel threatened by Western leadership in the international system and believe their countries should be given greater deference on issues implicating their own interests."
Chinese President Xi Jinping offered Beijing's support on Moscow's "core interests" at a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Wednesday.
Mishustin arrived in China to attend a commercial forum in Shanghai before heading to Beijing to meet with the Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Mishustin's trip this week is the highest-level visit by a Russian official to China since last year's invasion of Ukraine.
Xi told Mishustin China and Russia would continue to offer each other "firm support on issues concerning each other's core interests and strengthen collaboration in multilateral arenas", according to a readout by the official Xinhua news agency.
Mishustin also met with Li on Wednesday, saying that "relations between Russia and China are at an unprecedented high level" following a grand welcoming ceremony outside Beijing's Great Hall of the People.
"They are characterized by mutual respect of each other's interests, the desire to jointly respond to challenges, which is associated with increased turbulence in the international arena and the pressure of illegitimate sanctions from the collective West," he said.
Li, in turn, hailed the "comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between China and Russia in the new era.”
Li said bilateral trade had already reached $70 billion so far this year. "This is a year-on-year increase of more than 40 percent," he added.
"The scale of investment between the two countries is also continuously upgrading," Li said. "Strategic large-scale projects are steadily advancing."
Ministers from the two countries signed a series of agreements after the talks on service trade cooperation and sports, as well as on patents and Russian millet exports to China.
Mishustin is accompanied this week by top officials including Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who handles energy policy.
China last year became Russia's top energy customer as Moscow's gas exports otherwise plummeted due to a flurry of Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
And Novak told a Russia-China business forum in Shanghai on Tuesday that Russian energy supplies to China would increase by 40 percent year-on-year in 2023, Moscow's state media reported.
Analysts say China holds the upper hand in the relationship with Russia, and that its sway is growing as Moscow's international isolation deepens.
In February, Beijing released a paper calling for a "political settlement" to the Ukraine conflict, but Western countries said it could enable Russia to hold much of the territory it has seized.
Xi invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Beijing during their summit in Moscow in March.
Russia will achieve all its goals in Ukraine either through its special military operation or through all other means, the state TASS news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Wednesday.
Negotiations with Kyiv are impossible because the Ukrainian leadership itself has “forbidden negotiations of any kind with Russia, said the spokesman.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied Ukrainian territories a precondition for peace talks.
Putin, meanwhile, spoke of “increasing instability in the world” in light of the war he ordered last year, in a video message addressing a security conference in Moscow.
The Director General for Political and Security Affairs of the French Foreign Ministry emphasized Russia’s full responsibility for the unleashing and continuation of the war.
Frédéric Mondoloni reiterated upon receiving the Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs, Li Hui, that France and the European Union were determined to support it (Ukraine) in the long term, in every field.
