BS BULLETIN:
- China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi are among the leaders gathering in Kyrgyzstan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
- China and Russia increasingly use the 10-nation organization to promote a “multipolar” world less dominated by the United States and its Western allies.
- Iran’s president is attending while his country is actively fighting the United States and Israel — although India and other SCO members have their own interests and hardly constitute one unified anti-American bloc.
If Washington wants a picture of the world its adversaries would like to build, take a look at Bishkek this week.
Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and leaders from across Central Asia are gathering in the Kyrgyz capital for the 25th anniversary summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The organization officially says it isn’t an alliance aimed at other nations. China and Russia have nevertheless become increasingly enthusiastic about using it to demonstrate that the Western-led global order has competition. And these days, they’re attracting quite a guest list.
The SCO now has 10 full members: China, Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Another 15 countries are attached as dialogue partners, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and NATO member Turkey. Together, the full members represent roughly 40% of the world’s population and about a quarter of global GDP.
For Putin, the meeting offers another opportunity to demonstrate that Russia isn’t nearly as internationally isolated as Washington and its European allies would prefer. He’s scheduled to meet privately with Xi on Monday.
🚨’Uncertainty grows against the backdrop of unprecedented changes’ — China’s Xi Jinping tells Vladimir Putin.🇨🇳🇷🇺
‘The Shanghai Cooperation Organization carries an important mission to preserve stability and facilitate the development of the region’ pic.twitter.com/EuwQh3jDWc
— Aleksey The Great 🇷🇺🎖 (@aleksthgrt) August 31, 2026
On Tuesday, Putin is expected to sit down with Iran’s Pezeshkian. That’s particularly significant this year. Russia is now four-and-a-half years into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Iran, meanwhile, is six months into its war with the United States and Israel and is looking for economic and diplomatic support from governments outside the Western orbit.
China is the biggest player in the room.
Xi has increasingly portrayed Beijing as the defender of a “multipolar” international system in which Washington no longer gets to set the rules. Putin likes that idea too. But there’s a danger in looking at the summit photograph and assuming everyone smiling for it has joined Team China.
India certainly hasn’t. Modi has maintained India’s relationship with Russia while simultaneously deepening defense and economic ties with the United States. India also has a long-running border dispute with China and a profoundly hostile relationship with fellow SCO member Pakistan. Analysts have described New Delhi’s participation as less an embrace of Beijing’s worldview than another expression of India’s determination to maintain strategic independence and relationships with competing powers.
Even the Russia-China partnership isn’t quite as equal as the photographs suggest.
Russia’s wartime economic problems have made Moscow increasingly dependent on Beijing, while China has emerged with considerably greater leverage over its supposed partner.
Still, the optics matter. Xi and Putin don’t need every country in the room to hate America. They need countries to believe they have somewhere else to go. That’s what makes the SCO potentially significant for Washington. It offers governments unhappy with American pressure, sanctions or Western institutions another table at which to sit.
And this year’s table includes Russia while it fights Ukraine, Iran while it fights America and Israel, and India while Washington continues trying to keep the world’s most populous country firmly in its strategic orbit.
That’s quite a Monday morning group photo.
DBS WIRE SOURCES
- The Hill — Leaders of China, Russia and India Are Among Heads of State Meeting to Counter US Influence
- Associated Press — Leaders of China, Russia and India Are Among Heads of State Meeting to Counter US Influence
- Al Jazeera — Russia, China Leaders to Meet at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit
- Wall Street Journal — Putin Turns Again to China’s Xi as Russia’s Clout Crumbles
- Foreign Policy — India Has Diminishing Use for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
