Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, starting Thursday, gather with other Asian leaders in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand for a regional summit touted as a challenge to the West’s global influence.
Xi and Putin will be joined by the leaders of India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and several other countries for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in the Uzbek city on Thursday and Friday.
The main day of the summit will be Friday, but it is a meeting of Russian and Chinese leaders on Thursday that will be most closely watched.
For Putin, the summit is a chance to show that Russia cannot be isolated internationally at a time when Moscow’s armed forces are facing major setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine.
For Xi – on his first trip abroad since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic – it is an opportunity to bolster his credentials as a global statesman ahead of a crucial congress of the ruling Communist Party in October.
And for both leaders, the summit will be an opportunity to sniff at the West, particularly the United States, which has led the charge in imposing sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and angered Beijing with recent statements of support for Taiwan .
“The SCO offers a real alternative to Western-centric organizations,” Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser, told reporters in Moscow this week.
“All members of the SCO stand for a just world order,” he said, describing the summit as “against the backdrop of far-reaching geopolitical changes.”
– Tight security, empty streets –
Entry into Samarkand, a city with large tiled mosques that was one of the hubs of the Silk Road trade routes between China and Europe, was restricted in the days leading up to the summit as the airport was closed to commercial flights.
The streets and even the famous markets were largely deserted when AFP journalists visited on Wednesday, and schools were due to remain closed for the two days of the summit.
Security was tight across the city, with a huge police presence on the streets and armored vehicles parked downtown.
The SCO – consisting of China, Russia, India, Pakistan and the former Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – was founded in 2001 as a political, economic and security organization in competition with Western institutions.
It is not a formal military alliance like NATO, or a deeply integrated bloc like the European Union, but its members work together to address common security issues, cooperate militarily and promote trade.
The summit’s main joint session will take place on Friday, but much of the focus will be on bilateral talks.
Alongside Xi, Putin will meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday, then Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday.
Iran is an SCO observer state and Erdogan has been a key broker in deals between Russia and Ukraine on issues such as grain shipments.
– friendship without borders –
It was not clear who Xi might meet separately, although talks with Modi would be her first since 2019 after China-India relations turned frosty over deadly fighting in 2020 at their disputed Himalayan border.
Xi arrived in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to start his Central Asia tour and held talks with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
China and Russia, former Cold War allies with a tempestuous relationship, have grown closer in recent years as part of what they call a “no limits” relationship that acts as a counterbalance to global dominance by the United States.
Xi and Putin last met at the Beijing Winter Olympics in early February, days before Putin launched the military offensive in Ukraine.
Beijing has not explicitly endorsed Moscow’s military action, but has steadily developed economic and strategic ties with Russia over the six months of the conflict, with Xi pledging China’s support for Russia’s “sovereignty and security.”
For its part, Russia has backed China over Taiwan, calling US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island this summer a “clear provocation.”
In recent weeks there have been further signs that ties are strengthening.
Beijing sent hundreds of troops to take part in joint military exercises in Russia’s Far East, and Moscow recently announced that China would switch from US dollars to yuan and rubles to pay for supplies of Russian natural gas.
