Russian President Vladimir Putin is to participate this week in his first multilateral summit since an armed rebellion rattled Russia, as part of a rare international grouping in which his country still enjoys support.
Leaders are to convene virtually today for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a security grouping founded by Russia and China to counter Western alliances from East Asia to the Indian Ocean.
This year’s event is hosted by India, which became a member in 2017. It is the latest avenue for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to showcase the country’s growing global clout.
Photo: AFP
The group so far has focused on deepening security and economic cooperation, fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, tackling climate change and the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021.
When the foreign ministers met in India last month, Russia’s war on Ukraine barely featured in their public remarks, but the fallout for developing countries on food and fuel security remains a concern for the group, analysts have said.
The forum is more important than ever for Moscow, which is eager to show that the West has failed to isolate it. The group includes the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in a region where Russian influence runs deep. Others include Pakistan, which became a member in 2017, and Iran, which is set to join today. Belarus is also in line for membership.
“This SCO meeting is really one of the few opportunities globally that Putin will have to project strength and credibility,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.
None of the member countries has condemned Russia in UN resolutions, choosing instead to abstain. China has sent an envoy to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and India has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
For Putin personally, the summit presents an opportunity to show he is in control after a short-lived insurrection by Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“Putin will want to reassure his partners that he is very much still in charge, and leave no doubt that the challenges to his government have been crushed,” said Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
India in May announced that the summit would be held online instead of in-person like last year in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where Putin posed for photographs and dined with other leaders.
For New Delhi at least, the optics of hosting Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) just two weeks after Modi was honored with a pomp-filled state visit by US President Joe Biden would be less than ideal.
India’s relationship with Moscow has stayed strong throughout the war; it has scooped up record amounts of Russian crude and relies on Moscow for 60 percent of its defense hardware.
At the same time, the US and its allies have aggressively courted India, which they see as a counterweight to China’s growing ambitions.
A key priority for India in the forum is to balance its ties with the West and the East, with the country also hosting the G20 leading economies’ summit in September. It is also a platform for New Delhi to engage more deeply with Central Asia.
“India glorifies in this type of foreign policy where it’s wheeling and dealing with everybody at the same time,” said Derek Grossman, an Indo-Pacific analyst at the RAND Corp.
New Delhi would be looking to secure its own interests at the summit, observers have said.
It would likely emphasize the need to combat what it calls “cross-border terrorism” — a dig at Pakistan, whom India accuses of arming and training rebels fighting for independence of Indian-controlled Kashmir or its integration into Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.
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