Tag: Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Putin, Xi and Modi Meet for Shanghai Summit, Each Focused on Own Issues

Media Library

They represented the three biggest powers bidding to reshape a global order dominated by the United States, convening over video feeds at a virtual summit meeting on Tuesday. The question was whether it would be a show of unity — or of their sometimes-tense differences. For President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that meant projecting strength in the aftermath of the uprising by the Wagner mercenary group and claiming international support for his war in Ukraine. For China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, the summit was another opportunity to assail the…

A Distracted Russia Is Losing Its Grip on Its Old Soviet Sphere

Chin@Strategy

With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow has lost its aura and its grip, creating a disorderly vacuum that previously obedient former Soviet satraps, as well as China, are moving to fill. On the mountain-flanked steppes of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result in just one remote village has been devastating: homes reduced to rubble, a burned-out school and a gut-wrenching stench emanating from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens. All…