At the very moment that Xi Jinping was saying goodbye to Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was arriving in Kyiv. Separated by 5,000 miles of sparse steppes, the Japanese and Ukrainians are drawn together by a shared aspiration for freedom.

Meanwhile, their two great illiberal opponents are drawn together by — well, by distrust of freedom. “Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” Xi told Putin as he left Moscow. “And we are the people driving those changes.”