Russia and China are not creating a military alliance and are not hiding anything about their military cooperation, Vladimir Putin said in an interview with state television on Sunday, Russian news agencies quoted Reuters as saying.

The announcement comes after Russian and Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly emphasized their friendship and promised closer ties at a summit in Moscow earlier this week.

“We are not creating any military alliance with China,” Putin said, quoted by Interfax.

“Yes, we have cooperation in the field of military-technical cooperation. We do not hide it. Everything is transparent, there is nothing secret,” added the head of the Kremlin.

Putin also said that Western powers were trying to form more global alliances, accusing the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of starting to build a new “axis” somewhat similar to the alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II. . .

“That’s why Western analysts … say that the West is starting to build a new axis, similar to the one created in the 1930s by the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy and militarist Japan,” Putin said.