MOSCOW: Active preparations are under way for President Vladimir Putin’s upcoming trip to China, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, calling the visit “unprecedented”.

Aside from Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia have been invited to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, to be held in the port city of Tianjin from Aug 31 to Sept 1.

The summit will feature Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to China in more than seven years as the two neighbours work on further defusing tensions roiled by deadly border clashes in 2020, though the former last shared the same stage with Xi and Putin at last year’s BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.

Russian embassy officials in New Delhi said Moscow hopes trilateral talks with China and India will take place soon.

“Xi will want to use the summit as an opportunity to showcase what a post-American-led international order begins to look like and that all White House efforts since January to counter China, Iran, Russia, and now India have not had the intended effect,” said Eric Olander, editor-in-chief of China-Global South Project, a research agency.

This year’s summit will be the largest since the SCO was founded in 2001, a Chinese foreign ministry official said.

Modi is expected to depart after the summit, while Putin will stay on for a World War Two military parade in Beijing later in the week.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025