Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a defiant message against the West over his invasion of Ukraine after standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as the two leaders showcased their close ties at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in China.
Speaking to other leaders at the two-day summit in Tianjin on September 1, Putin said the war in Ukraine came about “not as a result of a Russian attack” but because of a Western-backed coup in Kyiv, according to comments carried by the Russian news agency TASS. That was an inaccurate reference to the Maidan protests that pushed Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014, after he scrapped plans for a trade agreement with the EU and turned toward Russia instead.
Putin added that what he called the West’s attempts to draw Ukraine into NATO posed a "direct threat to Russia’s security," a claim that the military alliance has repeatedly denied.
Putin went on to praise the SCO –- whose members include Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan -– as a blueprint for “a system that would replace the outdated Eurocentric and Euro-Atlantic models,” in reference to the Western-backed financial and security organizations that have shaped global institutions since World War II.
Those comments added to what had already been an SCO gathering focused on China’s growing diplomatic clout, including plenty of choreographed moments meant to show the deepening relationship between Beijing and Moscow by flaunting Putin and Xi’s close personal rapport.
Scenes from the summit’s welcome banquet on August 31 showed the two men walking side-by-side after posing for a photo with other leaders, with footage released from the event showing Xi gesturing for Putin to join him as he walked past the other representatives.
The summit was also an opportunity for Xi to cast himself as a leader of the Global South who prioritizes economic stability, seeking to contrast with the uncertainty brought by US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and cutting of US foreign aid.
“We should leverage the strength of our mega-sized markets and economic complementarity between member states and improve trade and investment facilitation,” Xi told leaders at the summit as part of a 14-minute speech.
The Chinese leader pledged 2 billion yuan ($280 million) in grants to SCO member states this year, and an additional 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) of loans to an SCO banking consortium. He also called for the creation of an SCO Development Bank to be set up as soon as possible.
A Step Forward For Xi, Putin, And The SCO?
Since its founding in 2001, the SCO has had few concrete policy achievements and often been criticized as a hollow talk shop for a collection of most-autocratic leaders to gather and push back against the Western-led global order.
Beijing is certainly trying to move past that moniker at this year’s summit in Tianjin by adopting a 10-year development plan as well as other economic and security initiatives.
But the bloc has also leaned even more into its symbolic value as it looks to reinforce the contours of an alternative global order where China is the first among equals.
Xi vowed to oppose “hegemonism,” “Cold War mentality,” and “bullying practices” -- all standard nomenclature used by the Chinese Communist Party to criticize the United States without having to specifically name it.
The attendance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also added to the summit’s diplomatic weight.
The trip marked Modi’s first visit to China in seven years and it comes as both Beijing and New Delhi have sought to repair their damaged ties in the face of stiff US tariffs and Western scrutiny over their relationships with Russia.
Modi and Xi met on August 31 and said that they planned to move ahead with normalizing relations, although analysts note that many key differences so far remain unresolved and that Beijing and New Delhi are still far away from a reset in relations.
Still, Modi appeared to embrace the choreography of the event.
He praised Xi during his comments on September 1 and was seen warmly greeting Putin before the two walked over hand in hand to greet Xi and share a friendly conversation.
The bloc achieved something of a small breakthrough in its joint declaration published after the second day of meetings in Tianjin.
The statement strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Indian Kashmir on April 22, which led to renewed fighting between India and Pakistan. It also condemned US and Israeli air strikes on Iran in June.
The consensus marks a notable shift for an organization normally constrained by its divisions. During the SCO's gathering of defense ministers in late June, India refused to sign a joint a statement about the strikes on Iran because it also omitted any reference to the Pahalgam attacks.
The SCO summit will be followed by another high-profile diplomatic event in China on September 3, a massive military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Many of the bloc’s leaders will be staying in China after the summit to attend the parade, although Modi plans to return to India.
Russian news agency reported early on September 2 that Putin had arrived in the capital, Beijing, for talks with Xi and Chinese officials ahead of the military parade.
