Russia’s military cooperation with Iran, North Korea and China has expanded into the sharing of sensitive technologies that could threaten the U.S. and its allies long after the Ukraine war ends, according to U.S. defense and intelligence officials.

The speed and depth of the expanding security ties involving the U.S. adversaries has at times surprised American intelligence analysts. Russia and the other nations have set aside historic frictions to collectively counter what they regard as a U.S.-dominated global system, they said.

It must be somebody pretty important in your life to warrant a personal airport pickup at 3 a.m. But that’s the honor North Korean “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un paid to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning, greeting the Russian President on a red carpet-laid runway in the wee hours and then riding with him through Pyongyang streets festooned with roses and murals of his stout, balding guest, whom Kim had earlier hailed as an “invincible comrade-in-arms.”

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s meeting in Beijing on Thursday left no question of how closely the Chinese and Russian leaders are aligned in their vision for the world – and on bolstering the “powerful driving force” of their autocratic double act.

The two vowed to deepen their strategic partnership, and took aim at a United States they painted as a destabilizing aggressor.

China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin on Thursday pledged a "new era" of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.

Xi greeted Putin on a red carpet outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where they were hailed by marching People's Liberation Army soldiers, a 21-gun salute on Tiananmen Square and children waving the flags of China and Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his effort to resolve the Ukraine conflict at a Beijing summit Thursday, where the two leaders reaffirmed a "no-limits" partnership that has grown deeper as both countries face deepening tensions with the west.

Putin’s two-day state visit to one of his strongest allies comes as his country’s forces are pressing an offensive in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in the most significant border incursion since the full-scale invasion began.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday pledged to deepen the countries' already close strategic ties and condemned what they claimed was aggressive behavior from the U.S.

Why it matters: The joint statement from the two leaders is an overt snub to U.S. officials, who traveled to China last month and objected to Beijing's material and financial support for Russia throughout its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

President Xi Jinping vowed to “never forget” NATO’s deadly bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, during a European trip that’s amplifying fissures in the region’s support for the US.

“Twenty-five years ago today, NATO flagrantly bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists,” Xi said, in a Tuesday article published in Politika, Serbia’s oldest daily newspaper. “That we should never forget,” he added. “We will never allow such tragic history to repeat itself.”

When Xi Jinping arrived in Italy for a state visit in 2019, he was given a lavish welcome, with private tours of Roman landmarks and a dinner serenaded by opera singer Andrea Bocelli, topped with a crowning flourish – Italy’s decision to join Xi’s signature Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

Five years on, the Chinese leader returns to Europe in a very different climate. Xi landed in France Sunday, and while the pomp and ceremony may remain during his six-day European tour, views on China across the continent have shifted dramatically since his last visit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the United States to be a partner of China and not “say one thing and do another” in a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Friday.

Blinken, in turn, expressed concerns about China’s supply of goods that could have military uses to Russia and its alleged manufacturing overcapacity.