Russians are “united as never before”, Vladimir Putin told the virtual meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) on Tuesday as he sought to show he was in control following the short-lived revolt.
The Russian leader also hoped the presence of the organisation’s other heavyweight members, China and India would show that the West has failed to fully isolate Russia on the world stage as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia, China and India are the three biggest powers attempting to reshape a global order dominated by the United States. But the smiles and messages of unity could not disguise the misgivings and often opposing agendas of the three nations, who might be regarded as fairweather friends, rather than steadfast allies.
Chinese president Xi Jinping used the summit to once again attack United States-led “hegemonism” and “power politics”.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, the meeting’s host, seized the opportunity to highlight his country’s rising global stature.
Days after his return from a high-profile visit to the United States, Modi had a telephone conversation with Putin on Friday about the recent developments in Russia.
Modi also made thinly veiled criticism of its nemesis, neighbour and fellow Shanghai member, Pakistan, by pointedly calling for other nations to unite in a “fight against terrorism”.
Ties between China and India are more ambiguous, due to border disputes and India’s membership in a security coalition with the United States called the Quad. Beijing views the organisation as a tool to contain China. So, too, does India, though of course it won’t say so.
Some analysts note, however, that the authoritarian streak in Modi, which worries some western democracies, has actually won him the respect of the hardline Chinese leadership.
“Many in the West may view Modi’s democratic regression in India with concern or at least discomfort. By contrast, it is reassuring to Beijing,” says Steven Tsang, director of London’s SOAS China Institute.
“While Modi is a nationalist and publicly takes a hardline over the border disputes with China, his administration has been much more accommodating on the ground. Mutual mistrust between Beijing and Delhi certainly exists, but Xi sees Modi as someone he can do business with.”
Speaking at his first international forum since the Wagner mutiny, Putin thanked the member states for their backing after the uprising. But some observers pointed to the conspicuous silence from Beijing in the hours during and after the Wagner rebellion, with China’s foreign ministry not saying much other than noting that events on 24 June were Russia’s “internal affairs”.
Putin was also keen to paint the Shanghai group summit as a major international show of support for his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
But that would be pushing it. The unscrupulous Modi regime may not have condemned the invasion, but it has exploited Russia’s problems by insisting on knockdown prices for the oil that Moscow can no longer sell to the West.
Conversely, analysts on the European Council of Foreign Relations have noted that the war in Ukraine has meant that Russia, traditionally on India’s side in regional disagreements, “seems distracted by its new, albeit uneasy, proximity to China”.
China has tacitly supported Russia in the conflict as part of its plan to maintain a power grouping opposed to the US. But in doing so, it knows it has damaged relations with the giant EU trading block.
In addition, Beijing has done little to conceal its alarm for the nuclear threats that Russia has made to Ukraine and the West as its military flails in Ukraine.
On Saturday, ex-Russian premier and former-moderate-turned warmonger, Dmitry Medvedev issued more of his incendiary threats about the nuclear conflict that would come unless the West stopped its backing of Ukraine. He said that opponents set on the “defeat” of Russia had created the current hostile environment and added that “an apocalypse is not only possible, but also quite probable.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak noted on Tuesday the importance of China’s influence in efforts to deter the potential nuclear threat from Russia.
He posted a screenshot of a Financial Times article about Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s reported warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin against a nuclear attack in Ukraine on the Telegram app.
“(This is) an important position of (China) regarding the nuclear threat from the insane Russian terrorist,” he said.
With the world economy and its own finances still shaky, the last thing Beijing wants is nuclear weapons being unleashed.
But fears that Moscow might instead resort instead to a false-flag attack on a nuclear plant in Ukraine were heightened with Russia’s Rosatom nuclear agency, Renat Karchaa declaring on state television that Moscow had received information that on the night of 5 July the Ukrainian Army would “try to attack the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant” with long-range weapons and drones.
Professor Tsang is not convinced that Xi Jinping will exert as much pressure to prevent Russia from targeting a nuclear plant, if Putin insists that he needs to do so to stay in power.
“Ukraine is far away from China regarding the risk of nuclear fallout. A nuclear incident in Ukraine, not that China wants one, will tie Europe and the US down for a long time, and leave the Indo-Pacific to China. Not all negative for China, from the perspective of a leader who practices a kind of ‘China First’ principle in order to make China great again.”
More reassuringly, one nuclear expert said today that the risk from an attack on the Zaporizhzhya plant may have been overstated, given the strength of the re-inforced structure and the semi-dormant state of the plant.
Dr Mark Wenman, reader in nuclear materials, Imperial College London, said: “It would take a very concerted effort to damage the containment building and cause any form of radioactive release from within. Even then the most notable isotope of concern to humans, iodine-131, has all gone due to the time elapsed since the reactors were operational. Overall the risks are still very small.”
Nonetheless, while ties between China, Russian and India, might be ambiguous and brittle, for now they undoubtedly represent to major challenge to the West.
