Apart from Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko listened to him via video conference. According to Lukashenko, he mediated between the Kremlin and the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, thereby ending the uprising.

In his speech, Putin accused the West of waging a “hybrid war with illegitimate and unprecedented anti-Russian sanctions”. He announced that he intends to expand relations with SCO countries – including in foreign trade, where transactions will increasingly be settled in local currency rather than US dollars in the future.

There is no criticism of Putin

Putin met no objections: Members of the organization, founded two decades ago through China’s efforts, are among the countries so far least critical of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

>> Read here: India is a partner of the goal, not an ally

Besides India, Russia and China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are also represented in the “Shanghai Cooperation Organization”, which mainly deals with regional security and economic cooperation.

Iran was officially recognized as the ninth member on Tuesday. Belarus has officially started the accession process.

The weight in the SCO is increasingly shifting to countries that have difficult relations with the West. None of the SCO countries voted in the UN General Assembly to condemn Russia’s war of aggression.

>> Read here: Russia’s oil business is doing better than ever

This also applies to India, which otherwise has not strayed from the group: the country has traditionally had close ties with Russia and supports the Kremlin by buying large quantities of Russian oil.

But Prime Minister Modi’s government is also trying to get closer to the West. After a grand reception in Washington in late June, Modi is expected to be the guest of honor at France’s National Day military parade in Paris next week.

Navigating between geopolitical poles is a major challenge for India. Within the SCO, the government has relied on Russia to act as a counterweight to India’s rival, China in recent years.

But since the Ukraine war, people have increasingly seen Russia as Beijing’s junior partner, said India foreign policy expert C. Raja Mohan of the Asia Society Policy Institute. This may be one of the reasons why India has shortened the SCO summit, which last year was organized as a multi-day event, to a video conference that lasts several hours.

However, in his speech, Modi was forgiving. “We don’t see SCO as a broad environment, but as a big family,” he said.

Xi Jinping criticizes “protectionism and unilateral sanctions”

There was no trace of the cautious criticism that Modi voiced last year at a bilateral meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Uzbekistan. “We are not living in an age of war,” Modi told the then Russian President – but without holding him responsible for the war.

The diplomatic words were later found in a similar form in the final document for the G20 summit in Indonesia, which was also approved by Russia.

Following the SCO summit, India hosted a meeting of G20 heads of state and government in September – and is once again trying to strike a deal between western nations on one side and Russia and China on the other.

The differences seem to have grown even further. No agreement was reached at the G20 ministerial meeting earlier this year.

At the SCO summit, Chinese President Xi turned against the West again: his country opposed “protectionism, unilateral sanctions, and the expansion of the concept of national security,” he said, and indirectly called on SCO members to resist Western influence: “We must formulate an independent foreign policy based on regional interests, and we must firmly hold the future of our country in our own hands.”

Again: Exports to Russia increased by 30 percent