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05-07-2023
SHANGHAI: As Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) commences its summit in India Tuesday, President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are to address the regional group, with Iran also participating as a full member for the first time, amid the war ongoing in Ukraine.
70-year-old Putin will be appearing for the first time since he faced a short-lived mutiny last month after the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a failed rebellion against Moscow, claiming to have taken control of key military facilities.
India is hosting the virtual summit of the eight-member SCO headquartered in Beijing but hosted by New Delhi which holds the rotating chair alongside the leaders of Russia, Pakistan and several Central Asian countries.
The world is waiting to see how the Russian President fares at this international event after successfully neutralizing a small-scale mutiny by a private military contractor led by his former associate Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The Kremlin has confirmed Putin will address the summit, while Chinese state media also reported Xi Jinping will take part.
Created in 2001 to discuss security and economic matters, other SCO members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with countries including Belarus and Mongolia invited as observers.
Encompassing a vast stretch of the globe from Moscow to Beijing, the bloc makes up around half the world’s population when including both member states as well as observer and “dialogue partner” nations.
Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst at the Rand Corporation, a US-based think tank, said: “It’s virtual, so they’re not going to be there in person, otherwise they would be standing alongside each other, fellow strongmen showing strength.”
“If Putin is kind of shaken by this [insurrection] visibly, then that would tell them something that even the strongest of strongmen is not necessarily immune to potential insurgencies within their countries,” Grossman said.
The China-led SCO is focused on increasing regional security and economic cooperation, combating terrorism and drug trafficking, fighting climate change and the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban assumed Kabul in 2021. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
