the russian presidents Vladimir Putin and chinese Xi Jinping met this Thursday in the Uzbek city of Samarkand in the midst of a summit with other leaders of the region seen as a counterweight to the West’s global influence.
Organized between Thursday and Friday at this old stop on the Silk Road, the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (OCS) will also feature the leaders of India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and other countries. The main summit will take place on Friday, but the event that generates the most interest is the meeting between the leaders of Russia and China, who have already arrived in Samarkand.
For Putin, the summit is an opportunity to demonstrate that Russia cannot remain isolated internationally despite the invasion of Ukraine, where his troops suffered major military setbacks.
The Chinese president called on Putin to lead a changing world to achieve stable and positive development. “Faced with the great global changes of our time, never before seen in all of history, we stand ready with Russian colleagues to set an example as responsible world powers and play a leading role in steering that rapidly changing world onto a trajectory of stable and positive development,” Xi said.
Xi, on his first trip abroad since the pandemiche will be able to flaunt his credentials as a global leader ahead of the all-important Communist Party congress in October where he is seeking a third term.
And for both leaders, the summit is an occasion to challenge the West, especially the United States, which has led the imposition of sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and has angered Beijing with its recent displays of support for Taiwan.
“The SCO offers a real alternative to Western-centric organizations,” Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said this week. “All SCO members stand for a just world order,” he added in comments to reporters in Moscow.
Putin’s meeting with Xi begins. He thanks you that China is taking a balanced position on Ukraine. He also considers US actions in Taiwan a provocation https://t.co/9ILZwzz7sK
— Sandro Pozzi (@sandro_pozzi) September 15, 2022
This was the protocol for the meeting between Putin and Xi
Entry to Samarkand, a city of large tiled mosques and a long-standing trade link between China and Europe, was restricted in the days leading up to the summit and the airport canceled its commercial flights.
The streets and its famous markets were almost empty on Wednesday where, instead, there was a significant police presence.
The SCO, made up of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was founded in 2001 as a political, economic and security organization to rival Western institutions.
It is not a formal military alliance like NATO or an integrated bloc like the European Union, but its members work together on security issues, military cooperation and trade promotion.
In addition to Xi, Putin will meet Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday.
Counterweight of China and Russia against Washington
Xi’s bilateral agenda is still unclear. A possible meeting with the Indian Modi is being considered, the first since 2019 and since the deadly armed clashes of 2020 on their disputed Himalayan border.
Allies at the beginning of the Cold War, the rrelationship between Moscow and Beijing it was poisoned afterwards, but in recent years it has narrowed again in an attempt to counter US dominance on the global stage.
Xi and Putin already met in Beijing in February for the Winter Olympics, shortly before Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine. Then both celebrated a friendship “without limits”.
China has not openly backed the war in Ukraine, but has developed economic and strategic ties with Russia in these months of conflict, and Xi has expressed support for the “sovereignty and security” of the Eurasian giant.
Russia, for its part, has supported China in its policy on Taiwan and called the visit to the island of the president of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, a “clear provocation”.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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