MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. Washington’s pressure on Moscow is helping Russia and China to move closer, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Channel One television on Thursday.

"The current situation is undeniably helping a further strengthening of the comprehensive, all-encompassing partnership between Moscow and Beijing and the expansion of the forms, parameters and nature of our interaction in most diverse areas," he said in response to a question.

Russia can’t "sit on its hands" and do nothing to deepen the strategic ties with China "in the conditions when both countries have come under identical and increasingly heavy pressure from the collective West," Ryabkov said.