Moscow, September 17 – Reviewing his participation in the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand last night, President Vladimir Putin emphasized that the strengthening of relations with the member countries—primarily China and India—creates conditions for the development of the Russian economy, which is especially relevant in the context of sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
The Kremlin leader—responding to questions from Russian reporters who accompanied him on this trip, a verbatim version of which was released by the presidential press service—accused Western countries of using Ukraine in what he called their quest to bring about Russia's disintegration, just as, he said, they had done before, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Russian president used his face-to-face meetings with the leaders of the SCO member states—with whom he reaffirmed Russia's traditional ties with China, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan—to once again explain his reasons for launching what he calls a special military operation in Ukraine. However, all indications are that Moscow has been unable to secure explicit support from its two main partners in Asia, Beijing and Delhi.
It has caught the attention of local commentators that in the official Chinese statement on the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping (on Thursday) there is not even a line mentioning Ukraine and that, in the first words he spoke in the fragment seen on Russian television, the Russian Prime Minister said that “I will certainly try to explain our position”, a phrase that suggested that the Chinese leader, who is trying to maintain a difficult balance in his relations with Russia and the United States, is not very happy with the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
