Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on Thursday in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on the sidelines of a summit with other leaders from the region seen as counterbalancing the West’s global influence.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting, organized from Thursday to Friday at this former Silk Road stopover, will also be attended by the leaders of India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and other countries.
The main meeting will take place on Friday, but the event that arouses the most interest is the meeting between the leaders of Russia and China.
For Putin, the summit is an opportunity to show that Russia cannot be isolated internationally, despite the invasion of Ukraine, where its troops have suffered significant military defeats.
Xi will demonstrate his credentials as a global leader on his first trip abroad since the start of the Covid19 pandemic ahead of October’s grand congress of the Communist Party where he is seeking a third term.
And for both, the summit is an opportunity to challenge the West, particularly the United States, which led the way in passing sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war and angering China with its demonstrations in support of Taiwan.
“The SCO offers a real alternative to Westerncentric organizations,” Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said this week.
“All SCO members stand for a just world order,” he added.