From a Washington Post column by Josh Rogin headlined “Putin is trying to build a new axis of autocrats”:

Taking a page from the Western alliance-building playbook, Russian President Vladimir Putin is devoting considerable time and energy to fostering a new axis of autocrats that is bringing Moscow into ever tighter collaboration with China, North Korea and Iran. Western countries play down these developments at their own peril. A powerful anti-Western bloc of dictatorships is taking shape.