Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday attended the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter Western alliances.
Putin and Xi joined the leaders of other countries that are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its annual meeting in Astana.
The grouping was established in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to promote regional security and economic cooperation. It was later joined by India, Pakistan and Iran. Belarus yesterday joined the SCO.
Photo: AFP
Observer states and dialogue partners include Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Besides Putin and Xi, and summit host Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, attending yesterday’s meeting are Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Iran is still choosing a successor to former president Ebrahim Raisi, killed in a helicopter crash in May, with a runoff election today Friday, so acting president Mohammad Mokhbar would attend.
Other guests of the SCO include Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is visiting Central Asia, was also expected to attend.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sent his foreign minister. Indian media reports speculated the recently re-elected Modi was busy with the parliament session that began last week.
For Putin, the summit offered another venue to demonstrate the failure of Western efforts to isolate Russia over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
At a meeting with Xi on Wednesday, Putin hailed the SCO as “one of the key pillars of a fair, multipolar world order,” and said ties between Moscow and Beijing are “experiencing the best period in their history.”
It marked their second meeting in as many months following Putin’s visit to China, which underscored Beijing’s political support for Moscow amid Western sanctions and China’s role as a top market for Russian oil and gas. Russia also has relied on Beijing as a main source of high-tech imports to keep its military machine running.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS