Upon arriving in Russia Monday, Xi Jinping was greeted on the runway by a military band.

Regardless of circumstance, the Kremlin would’ve made a spectacle of Xi’s state visit this week. But in the current geopolitical environment, the pomp and ceremony was designed specifically to reinforce the idea that Vladimir Putin has the unwavering support of Beijing.

It says a lot about a nation when a doomsday arsenal of nuclear weapons and an ocean of fossil fuels aren’t enough to compensate for one man’s Napoleon complex. Everyone needs friends on the international stage, but Putin’s pandering to Xi in the wake of the Ukraine invasion borders on the obsequious. I’ve said this a dozen times, and I’m sure I’ll say it a dozen more: Russia is a client state of China’s at this juncture.

Xi’s visit comes a month after his top diplomat, Wang Yi, was likewise afforded a hero’s welcome in Moscow, and three days after the ICC issued a (symbolic) arrest warrant for Putin predicated on allegations of forcibly abducting Ukrainian children. The whole thing is so farcically nefarious that it’d be funny were it not for the historic tragedy unfolding next door.

As Donald Trump correctly (albeit uncouthly) noted, America “isn’t so innocent ourselves” when it comes to foreign policy. Nobody who’s honest ever claims anything like innocence for the US. At various intervals, I’ve asserted the opposite of innocence for Washington on the world stage, and I’ll take the opportunity to reiterate that again today on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, one of the most ill-advised blunders in modern military history.

But Putin and, increasingly, Xi, have an accidental penchant for living up to cartoon stereotypes. Russia’s habit of poisoning people on foreign soil is a good example, and Maria Zakharova is someone James Bond would date but never trust. Xi’s foreign ministry sounds more like KCNA every day, and when he dresses up like Mao and shakes his fist around, it elicits fatalistic eye rolls and silent laments for what could’ve been.

Fittingly, the two of them (Putin and Xi) stumbled into an autocratic misstep almost immediately Monday, when, while sitting down for a six-course meal featuring, among other things, seafood, crepes, quail, fish soup, venison, pavlova and pomegranate sorbet, Xi pre-announced Putin’s next term. “You heard him wrong,” Dmitri Peskov told reporters, when queried on Xi’s remark.

That single incident encapsulated the entire farcical pageant. A dictator who, just five months ago, abolished term limits in his own country such that he can rule for life, congratulating another dictator on an election he hasn’t even declared his candidacy for yet, and all while the two of them indulged a feast served in an ornate fortress.

Putin put up an actual billboard at the airport that read, in Chinese, “We warmly welcome the visit of President Xi Jinping.” In remarks ahead of an informal meeting between the two, Putin lauded what, at least on one English translation, read as China’s “great leap forward.” “I even envy you a little bit,” he said, of Xi.

Needless to say, Volodymyr Zelensky is skeptical about all of this. Late last month, China released what Beijing characterized as a roadmap for peace, and although Zelensky said he “wanted to believe” that Xi is interested in facilitating an end to the hostilities, he also expressed extreme consternation at the prospect of Beijing arming Moscow.

On Sunday evening, hours before Xi landed in Russia, Zelensky recapped the kind of week it was in Ukraine. “Another week when every day, every night, the Russian army shelled our cities, our villages, and murdered our people,” he said.