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Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said on Saturday that Russian citizens were being deprived of their overseas assets "for no reason", calling the sanctions against Russia "outrageous".

“The sanctions against Russia are getting more and more outrageous", he said at a security forum in Beijing.

Speaking out against NATO's eastward expansion, he stated that sanctions only harm ordinary people and worsen the global economy, and that the alliance's expansion virtually forced a power like Russia "into a corner."

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"This pursuit of absolute security (by NATO) precisely leads to absolute non-security", Le said. "The consequences of forcing a major power, especially a nuclear power, into a corner are even more unimaginable".

Chinese-Russian relations

Russia had launched a special military operation for several reasons, such as NATO's eastward expansion, the Ukrainian shelling of Donbass, and the killing of the people of the Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic, as well as denazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said on Saturday that cooperation between China and Russia will only strengthen as the West weakens all underpinnings of the international system.

"Now, of course, I think this interaction [between Russia and China] will be strengthened, because in the context when the West is just brutally undermining all the foundations the international system is based on, certainly, we need to consider what the two great powers will do in this world," Lavrov said on the margins of the Leaders of Russia management competition.

The Russian foreign minister also stressed that relations between Moscow and Beijing have reached an extraordinarily high level, surpassing even traditional ally connections.