Vladimir Putin’s failures test his relationship with Xi Jinping

“In light of ongoing formidable global changes never seen in history, we stand ready to work with our Russian counterparts to set an example of what a responsible global power is and take leadership to bring the rapidly changing world into a path to sustainable and positive development.”

With Putin’s power diminished, Xi had to tread a delicate line in Samarkand.

The Shanghai Co-operation Forum (SCO) was founded by China to promote ties with Central Asia. It is the successful embodiment of what Beijing has tried to do in the Pacific – create a network of states sympathetic to its goals through promises of economic development.

Now more than two decades old, it is a key source of diplomatic support for Beijing in wider multilateral institutions. But like former Soviet republics, its members, including Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, are also wary of Russia and its territorial ambitions.

Evan Feigenbaum, a former US assistant deputy secretary of state, said Xi had made a personal investment in Putin’s ambitions but that he should be careful not to drive a wedge with China’s other neighbors, especially as Russia’s war machine sputters.

Feigenbaum said, for this reason, Xi would continue the “Beijing interface”.

“Beijing’s goal is surely to maintain its entente with Russia at the strategic level, to offset American power and growing economic pressure on China from the West,” he wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“But it wants to do this without having to back Moscow at the tactical level, as it also benefits from maintaining global market access, avoiding Western sanctions and building relations with countries such as those in Central Asia that fear Russia.”

The SCO is also getting a new member, Iran. “Tehran sees joining the SCO as an important diplomatic achievement,” said Anna Jordanová, a visiting fellow at the Bourse and Bazaar Foundation.

China can now add Iran to its list of multilateral partners unhappy with the West.

Beijing is creating its own alternative world order. Russia struggles to rebuild its empire.

“It is no exaggeration to call it the new Cold War era,” said the head of South Korea’s Jeju Forum, Woo Keun-min. “It is thrown into the vortex of the crisis.”

For now, Xi and Putin’s uneasy quid-pro-quo continues to suit both their interests.

Russia’s long campaign is destabilizing global affairs, putting economic pressure on Europe and the United States, and allowing China to woo developing countries away from the Western-led international order.

Lacking supplies, equipment and military acumen, Putin boasts the tacit support of the leader of the world’s second-largest economy.

But having failed to win the war within six months, he is now in a far weaker position than he was on that freezing night atop the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing in February.

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