Chinese President Xi Jinping warned against foreign interference in the affairs of other nations during a speech in Moscow yesterday, sending a signal to the West and echoing a message often repeated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Permanent UN Security Council members with veto power, Russia and China have frequently teamed up diplomatically to blunt the influence of the US and its Nato allies and have blocked three draft resolutions on Syria.

“We must respect the right of each country in the world to independently choose its path of development and oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” Xi told students at an international relations school.

He spoke a day after meeting Putin on his first foreign trip since becoming president, a choice both said underscored a “strategic partnership” between Russia and China. In the Kremlin, he told Putin: “you and I are good friends.”

Xi told Russian students yesterday: “Strong Chinese-Russian relations... not only answer to our interests but also serve as an important, reliable guarantee of an international strategic balance and peace.”

Putin, who began a six-year term last May, has often criticised foreign interference in sovereign states.

Russia and China have resisted Western calls to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the two-year-old civil conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

They both criticised the Nato bombing that helped rebels overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and stood together in the Security Council in votes on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programmes.