PM Modi-Putin meet likely on SCO sidelines, interaction with China's XI remote

New Delhi, September 2

With less than a fortnight left for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on its sidelines while a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be remote.

A firm indication of PM Modi’s bilaterals with the Russian and Chinese Presidents will come from preparatory meetings between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his counterparts from the two countries during his visit to New York for the UN General Assembly.

Sources said a meeting between Jaishankar and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is on the cards, which suggests a subsequent meeting between their principals PM Modi and Putin. However, there is no indication of such a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, said sources here.

Though a meeting between PM Modi and Xi may not materialise at the SCO summit, the two leaders will get another opportunity to hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit expected to be held in Indonesia in mid-November.

Contacts between India and China have reduced drastically after the Galwan Valley clash in 2020 which was preceded by the misreading of Xi’s intentions despite two unusually long interactions with PM Modi at Wuhan and Mamallapuram in 2019.

Earlier this week, Jaishankar had pushed back at Chinese objections to the presence of outside forces’ in the region, especially the South China Sea, by stating that resident powers in Asia like the US or proximate ones like Australia have legitimate interests in the region and that their contribution is also invaluable for securing the global commons.

The Minister had also warned against “narrow Asian chauvinism’’, pointing out that the sentiment of Asia for Asians was encouraged in the past, even in India. “The Bandung spirit, however, got its reality check within its first decade,’’ he had said.