SCO Summit: Xi Welcomes Putin, Modi and Other Leaders

Vladimir Putin has arrived in China to a red-carpet greeting for the behind-closed-doors summit of an anti-Western coalition dubbed the “axis of upheaval”.

On Sunday, the Russian president was pictured shaking hands with Xi Jinping as he hosted a gathering of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO).

A top Kremlin aide said the two leaders held “detailed” discussions, including a debrief on a recent peace summit with Donald Trump, at what was the beginning of an unprecedented four-day overseas visit for Putin.

Yuri Ushakov said the Russian president would be the “main guest” at a military parade on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

Putin is expected to attempt to solidify his alliance with Beijing, which has been vital for sustaining his war machine through the deliveries of components for drone and missile production.

He is likely to frame his calls for help as part of a mounting struggle between SCO member states and Western governments.

Before arriving in China, Putin criticised what he called “discriminatory” Western sanctions, which he said Moscow and Beijing jointly opposed.

His remarks were significant given that Narendra Modi, Indian prime minister, would be attending the summit in China days after the US imposed a 50 per cent tariff on New Delhi over its refusal to stop buying Russian oil.

Modi, who Putin is expected to meet on the sidelines of the SCO gathering, had skipped last year’s summit.

The Russian president is also scheduled to meet his Turkish, Serbian, Iranian, and Uzbek counterparts – Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Aleksandar Vučić, Masoud Pezeshkian, and Shavkat Mirziyoyev – for talks, according to the Kremlin.

US officials are likely to be following details of those meetings from afar, after it was reported the White House believed Europe and Ukraine were blocking Trump’s efforts to end the war.

A Kremlin spokesman on Sunday also blamed the “European party of war” for hindering the US president’s peace talks.

“We are ready to resolve the problem by political and diplomatic means,” Dmitry Peskov said.

“But so far we do not see reciprocity from Kyiv in this. So we shall continue the special military operation.”

Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said on Sunday that Europe was working on “pretty precise plans” for military deployments to Ukraine with full US backing.

She told the Financial Times: “President Trump reassured us that there will be [an] American presence as part of the backstop. That was very clear and repeatedly affirmed.”

During a visit to Poland’s border with Belarus, Ms Von der Leyen also asserted that Trump “wants peace”.

She said of Putin: “He is a predator. We know by experience he can only be kept in check through strong deterrence.

“We have to keep the sense of urgency because we know that Putin has and will not change.”

The Shanghai summit will be the SCO’s largest meeting of world leaders since 2001, when it was formed as a security bloc by Beijing and Moscow as a counterbalance against Western governments and Nato.

It comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, as well as 16 other countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners”.

Its members are known to share intelligence and conduct counter-terror training drills together.

Official posters promoting the SCO lined the streets of Tianjin, displaying words such as “mutual benefit” and “equality” written in Chinese and Russian.

Experts say that the two nations are using the summit to curry favour among allies that Western governments often attempt to influence.

Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told the AFP news agency: “China has long sought to present the SCO as a non-Western-led power bloc that promotes a new type of international relations, which, it claims, is more democratic.”