Putin arrives in Kazakhstan for Russia-China dominated SCO summit

2 months ago 11

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin arrived in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (3 July) for regional security and defence talks, the Kremlin said, as well as a series of bilateral meetings, including with Chinese and Turkish leaders.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a forum established by China and Russia in 2001 as a guardian of security in the Eurasia region, will meet for their summit on 3-4 July in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Astana.

“The leaders of the SCO member countries will discuss the current state and prospects for further deepening multifaceted cooperation within the organization and improving its activities,” the Kremlin said in a statement on its website.

While the meeting is likely to be dominated by Russia and China, leaders or representatives of Azerbaijan, Belarus, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, China, Mongolia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, are also expected to attend.

United Nation Secretary General António Guterres, is also expected, Russian agencies said on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Russia said Putin will hold series of bilateral talks, including with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected in Moscow this month, will not attend and the country will be represented by Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the ministry said on Tuesday.

At last year’s virtual summit, the group issued a statement critical of what it said was the negative impact of “unilateral and unlimited expansion of global missile defence systems by certain countries or groups of countries”, without directly referring to NATO’s expansion and Western military assistance to Ukraine.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on17 March 2023 against Putin, accusing him of being responsible for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Since then Putin hasn’t left Russia except to visit other states that aren’t parties to the court, including China and former Soviet republics such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)