A serving senator and former ambassador describing Russia and China as of one mind on a security question is a signal of intent.
A senior Russian parliamentarian has said that Russia and China hold close positions on NATO's growing activity in the Asia-Pacific and have every reason to oppose it, according to an interview with TASS published on Monday. Andrey Denisov, who chairs the international committee of Russia's Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, and who served as ambassador to China from 2013 to 2022, told the agency that the shift of NATO's activities into the region is in fact taking place and carries a certain threat.
"I think that both China and Russia have every reason to oppose this in every way possible and, ultimately, to prevent NATO from spreading its activities to [this] region," Denisov said, according to TASS. He argued that NATO countries have effectively created an explosive situation in Europe and are now seeking to spread it to the Asia-Pacific, adding that Moscow and Beijing hold stances that are, in his words, if not identical then close.
The remarks were made in Beijing, where Denisov is accompanying a Federation Council delegation led by the upper house's speaker, Valentina Matviyenko. The visit gives the comments a diplomatic as well as a rhetorical dimension: they were delivered on Chinese soil during a formal parliamentary exchange, and they frame opposition to NATO's regional role as a shared Russo-Chinese position rather than a unilateral complaint.
What the report does not establish is the substance behind the alignment. It offers no detail on which specific NATO activities the senator has in mind, no account of any joint measures the two countries might take, and no indication of whether his language reflects an agreed position or his own reading of it. The article also does not say whether Chinese officials have endorsed his characterisation, nor whether the matter was raised in meetings with their Chinese counterparts. NATO itself is not quoted, and no Western response is included.
The significance lies in the framing. A serving senator and former ambassador describing Russia and China as of one mind on a security question is a signal of intent, and it comes as the two capitals have deepened their diplomatic and parliamentary contacts. For readers outside the region, the question is whether such statements remain declaratory or translate into coordinated opposition. On the material available, that cannot be answered. What can be said is that a Russian legislator has chosen a Beijing platform to cast NATO's Pacific outreach as a shared threat, and has done so in explicitly cooperative terms.
