SCO Summit Opens In Bishkek: Putin, Xi, Modi, And Iran’s Pezeshkian Convene As U.S.-Iran War Tops The Agenda – JP
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The 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit opened on Monday in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with Chinese, Russian, Indian and Iranian leaders attending the meeting along with other member countries and observer states. Discussions at the two-day summit are expected to touch upon various topics including the ongoing war in the Middle East, energy and trade routes, and the broader transition to a multipolar world order.
Xi Jinping, the President of China, Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, arrived in Bishkek ahead of the summit, which runs August 31 to September 1 under the chairmanship of Sadyr Zhaparov, President of the Kyrgyz Republic. The summit marks the 25th anniversary of the SCO’s founding — a milestone that carries additional weight given the active U.S.-Iran conflict destabilizing global energy markets since late February.
Putin will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in separate bilateral talks. Pezeshkian arrived in Bishkek from Tehran where overnight news of U.S. strikes on Larak Island and Iranian retaliatory missile attacks on U.S. air bases in Jordan had played out. The Iran war is expected to dominate sideline conversations even if formal summit language remains carefully measured.
Modi arrived in Bishkek from Uzbekistan, where he received that country’s highest state honor. The Indian prime minister said before departing New Delhi that he aims to advance India’s vision for Central Asia centered on security, connectivity and opportunity — and a region free from terrorism, separatism and extremism. Bilateral meetings with Zhaparov, Putin, and other SCO leaders are scheduled on the summit’s sidelines.
On the agenda of the summit are regional security and counter-terrorism, transnational crime, trade and logistics, energy, digital infrastructure, and cross-border payment systems via national currencies. The Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline — linking Russian Siberian fields to China via Mongolia — remains a headline bilateral topic between Putin and Xi.
The make-up of the SCO summit is itself indicative of the limits that Western economic isolation strategies have encountered. When formal sessions get under way on Tuesday, member and observer nations representing roughly 40 percent of the world’s population and a commanding share of global energy reserves will be seated at the table.