Putin finally came out of diplomatic isolation and met with the leaders of China, India and the DPRK

Alexander Baunov explains why the Russian president is now in a much stronger position than Trump

In the Chinese Tianjin from August 31 to September 2, the SCO summitwas held . It was attended by the Chairman of the PRC Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iranian President Masud Cyzeshkin, as well as UN Secretary General Antoniu Gutherrish. This, as a rule, the routine event this time attracted a lot of attention. Russia has finally emerged from diplomatic isolation - and moreover, it showed that the decision -making center in the world has shifted east. In addition, immediately after many leaders visited the military parade in China. The senior researcher at the Carnegie Berlin Center for the Study of Russia and Eurasia, Alexander Baunov, analyzes past events.

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The current meetings in Beijing are instructed to perceive against the backdrop of the "big twenty", which took place in Australian Brisben for more than ten years ago. Then, during the first war of Russia against Ukraine, the Western leaders managed to spread Putin's rejection to non -Western participants in the meeting.

Although, waiting for a cold reception in Brisben, Putin drove on the road to China on the APEC summit and defiantly at homely threw a shall on the shoulders of the wife of Xi Jinping Pan Liuan (she politely removed her), at the very summit, the situation was not at all family. Not only the Western leaders bypassed Putin, and Si himself preferred to spend more time not with Putin, but with Obama. Then, in 2014, the Russian seal also presented joint photos with those who would later be called the leaders of the global majority, but Putin was surrounded by alienation and on the “family photo” stood from the very edge in the front row and, annoyed, he left ahead of time, without waiting for the final statements and documents.

One of the reasons was the solid line of the then President of the United States, which not only himself kept from Putin aside, but did not suit the backward meetings and managed to keep most of the participants from warm informal communication with the Russian leader. The majority was in the stupor: forcibly changes in borders and civilian aircraft shot down by a combat missile have not been seen for a long time not only in the West, but also in the global south.

Against this Brisbensky background, the current position of Putin, who wages the war, is all there, in Ukraine, but already absolutely open and incomparably more cruel, looks like a complete diplomatic triumph. Instead of an abbreviated stay - unprecedented four days of visit. Photos with the leaders of the global majority were not on duty, and the contacts are careful. It was in some way a revenge for Brisben.

The reason for success is the actions of the current president of the United States. Regardless of his own intentions, the meeting in Alaska gave Putin what Obama refused him after the beginning of the first war: the complete legitimacy of international contacts. After the carpet and demonstrations of American hospitality in Anchorida, the leaders of the global south could only compete with Trump in cordiality.

The gaping absence of the US president at the anniversary parade of the Allied victory in Asia, where the United States considered themselves the main winners and few people argued with this, added visibility of the Kremlin thesis: it is not us - this is the Western is isolated, while the center of the world has shifted to the south and east along with the growth of the world economy and the global majority.

The situation was aggravated by a painful and, as always, the biased commentary of Trump. In the most offended colors, he was not so much congratulated by China on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, as much as he reminded that his country had a direct relation to this end, made victims and would not let her win her victory.

Trump's replicas final, where he asks to convey greetings to Pekin Putin and Kima, who is talking against him in Beijing, and at all looks at the phrase of an offended teenager who is not invited to the birthday of a recognized factory or the main beauty of the class. This comment only emphasized the ambiguity of Trump’s position, which either refused in the process of coordinating the format of the celebration, or was simply not called.

How his visit to China Putin humiliated Trump

Until recently, both intonations - “We will not let the ungrateful world down to the Mercy” and “You will still regret that we have not taken us” - were characteristic precisely for Vladimir Putin and his subordinates. Moreover, for Putin, a perfect bingo-the anniversary, 25th SCO summit and the anniversary of the end of the World War, a great victory in which is the main cement of the current Russian ideology. Literally replacement of what his great revolution was for the USSR.

At the same time, the SCO does not have to be a beloved child neither SI nor Putin. The Shanghai cooperation organization was formed by Jiang Zemin , with whose "Shanghai clan" SI always had a complex relationship (he eventually defeated and squeezed out of the leadership). For Putin, the creation of the SCO coincided with the period of relative weakness of his personally and Russia, so China in this pair is the main one: the organization is called Shanghai and it works directly from China, and not in the third in relation to Russia or China to the country.

The Shanghai organization expanded, including at invitation from Moscow to balance the asymmetric role of China, but did not show itself especially effective even where it is about the direct interests of its members (recent Indo-Pakistani conflict or a brief airy war between Israel and Iran). However, it is important for Putin that Western countries are not represented in the SCO and that its summit smoothly moved to the anniversary celebrations of the Victory in honor of the end of the Second World War, from the memory of which Putin now wants to maximize the Western allies - even in the east.

The anniversary of the victory in Asia without a Western representation not only deprived this diplomatic rang of historical truth and proper balance, but also fixed the Kremlin angle of view to the world war.

For the Russian and partly world audienceof the photo shoot from Tianjin and Beijing, they became a natural continuation of Putin's photographs from Alaska, and this proposal turned Alaskan photographs not in favor of Trump. Now it is even more obvious that the meeting was not a manifestation of the goodwill of the Russian president, but rather a consequence of the fact that nothing to decide without him. But Putin and friends do well without Trump. Including a festival that is directly related to America. For Trump with his classic perception of national history through the war, leaders and victory, this should be sensitive.

A personal meeting is one of the important resources that American presidents have. And now it is more and more obvious that this resource in Alaska was wasted, or even splashed out with a negative result.

This is not the first time in the history of the United States to adhere to a milder policy regarding dictators than Europeans. Washington for a long time is incomparably more practical responsibility for world security and this justified its lesser fundamental.

For forty years of Francisco Franco’s stay in power, not a single European democratic leader met with him, but the US presidents - Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon twice. However, the result of their visits was not only the legitimation of the dictator. Eisenhower’s military agreement with Franco not only included Spain in the Western Security System, but also forced the regime to accept new economic rules, which eventually brought the end of the dictatorship. Nixon’s visit to the decrepit Franco and his young successor strengthened the position of the latter and helped the successful dismantling of the regime.

We do not observe anything like this in the event of a meeting in Alaska. Trump spent his diplomatic asset without any visible result. He did not affect Putin.

On the contrary, Trump entered the room with at least one fundamental discrepancy with Moscow regarding the end of the war, and came out without this discrepancy, with the position of close Kremlin. Before the meeting in Anchorage for Trump, there was a fundamentally ceasefire, and after the meeting - it also ceased to matter. Now in the Kremlin and in the White House they pretend that they go straight to a comprehensive peace agreement, but from the Russian side they go to him - as they wanted - in parallel with the fighting. And the agreement itself should include not only the Russian-Ukrainian, but also a pan-European and almost global theme, the coordination of which, if desired, gives the Russian regime simply an unlimited time for warfare in Ukraine.

The evasive consent to the ambulance of a direct meeting with Zelensky for the end of the war, which Trump tried to present as success, was very soon refuted by bay, and then Putin himself in the form of "I do not mind, but, firstly, not time, and secondly, even at first he will deal with his own legitimacy."

Just after the happy photos from Beijing and against the backdrop of ceremonial interiors in the style of Chinese antiquity, Putin made a lengthy pseudo -league reasoning that the issue of Zelensky’s legitimacy is in a constitutional impasse, from which there is no legal exit. This suggestion is generally humiliating for Trump, who did not put, unlike his predecessors, into question the legitimacy of Putin himself-long ago expired by any standards-and did not refuse to meet, referring to the lack of proper preparation, study and documents for signing.

That is, Trump went for a breakthrough at an unprepared meeting, and Putin refuses to do the same. To top it off, Putin, not only as a gesture of gratitude to the owner of the meeting, did not weaken the intensity of the bombing of Ukrainian cities, on the contrary, they became more frequent and cruel .

All this did not affect Putin's reception in China and his speeches from there. Frequent and incomprehensible on what the based hopes that Putin in China will make an suggestion, that Si or Modi will give him something like Trump that Russia will stop breaking the world order, are not confirmed in any way.

Trump wanted to move Russia from China, but in the end he himself approached them

After the events in the Tianjin and Beijing, it became clear that the main excuse for Trump's rapprochement with Putin was baselessly. Trump could not, like a new nixon , divide, move Russia and China away from each other. It is this separation that underlies the countless rationalizations of the irrational personal compliance of Trump in relation to Putin: they say, Trump, attracting Putin, weakens China.

Although the situations are still different. On the eve of the famous, literally sunk (even opera is), Nixon’s visit to Mao Moscow and Beijing were already at enmity and competed. We are not observing anything like this now. Everything looks so that in the face of an indivisible ligament of Russia and China, Trump's assignment of one Russia is simultaneously a concession to both. Trump's offended tone indicates that he noticed it too.

Trump eventually not so much dragged Russia from China, but in a number of questions approached both of them - in particular, changing his position on the cessation of fire in Ukraine and personally pushing the moment of punishment of intractable Russia by sanctions. Despite the fact that the corresponding threats cause less confidence and in any case are already digested and taken into account by the market.

Paradoxically, simultaneously with this rapprochement, Trump moved away from both of them. Hence the practical impossibility of appearing on the anniversary of the victory in Beijing. Although, it would seem, if you successfully began to interact with Putin and move it from Beijing, you need to appear where the attraction is the most, continue work and consolidate success. But the lack of success is too obvious: there is simply nothing to consolidate.

But the bunch of Putin - si looks so stronger than the bunch of Putin - Trump that the potential trip of Trump to China, where Putin was already on the occasion of the SCO anniversary, would look literally like a trip to a meeting with their tandem.

In parallel, India leads his game, trying to sit on all chairs

President Trump not only gave his diplomatic asset to Putin. In the process of gift, he lost an important achievement of American diplomacy in recent years-American-Indian rapprochement.

The consent between the most important and largest democracies of the world seemed absolutely natural, but for a very long time did not correspond to the real distribution of countries in camps. Democratic India was closer to Moscow than to Washington, who, in contrast, supported Pakistan, now and then rolling into dictatorships. The situation seriously began to change at the beginning of this century, the relations of two democracies grew into partnerships, and India against the backdrop of the stronger alliance of Beijing and Moscow - was perceived as a relatively weak link in new non -decayed and anti -Western international constructions.

Trump initially successfully picked up the tradition. Modi came to Washington one of the first foreign leaders. This happened on February 13, 2025-the day after the sensational firstcall of Trump Putin. For the American president, this might look like a quick commissioning of a strategic anti -Chinese plan.

However, six months later, the first meeting with Modi, like the first call to Putin, did not lead to the planned result. At the Brix summit in the summer of 2024, Putin posed as a moderator between Modi and Si, who managed to call in Kazan simultaneously. Modi arrived in China after a seven-year break and immediately after the Trump decree on 50% duties against India entered into force-of which 25% for trade imbalance and additional 25% for the purchase of Russian oil. Duties entered into force on August 27, caused a sharp verbal rebuff of the Indian leadership, and already on August 31, Modi warmly communicated with Si on his - previously considered enemy - territory under the smiling views of Putin, Si and Kim.

This does not mean that India will suddenly break with the United States and join the conditional pole of autocrats. Delhi is more likely to arrange their current situation, in which there is the opportunity to use the best among the three China, Russia, India - and even BRICS in general - relations with the United States, and at the same time defend their own benefits, leaning against anti -Western formats and organizations of the “global majority”. That is, India is more convenient in the role in which Russia could theoretically be, it does not begin its own. In any case, in a large beautiful union against China, you can put a cross.

The European Summit of the Allies of Ukraine with the participation of Zelensky in Paris on September 4 did not adjust the impressive imagery of the Tianzinsky and Beijing events and the really important news about the Indian-Chinese rapprochement. Against this background, even a new important intimacy in the triangle China - Russia - North Korea was lost.

At the celebrations in China, there were conditional defectors from the Western camp - Viktor Orban and Robert Fitzo - but at European meetings in the support of Ukraine it is now impossible to imagine representatives of the global south even from among the minoritarians. Why is it to them if the United States itself distance from support? By the way, Moscow, which is always looking for a Nazi past from the European countries critical of it, has no comments on the presence of the leaders of the countries of the countries who literally fought on the side of the vanquished.

You can refer to the fact that the real efficiency of the SCO or the real economic, military and political yield of solemn events, judging by what we know, is small. Although asymmetric abolition of visas by China for Russians without reciprocity (Russia is still “studying the issue”) looks like a generous gift. After all, Russia itself in this matter always insists on mutual cancellation.

And this, of course, is the key to the hearts of the potentially larger number of Russian citizens, cut off from the usual trips in the west direction. On the other hand, multilateral celebrations and diplomatic raautes take place not only for the sake of specific agreements, but also in order to make the right impression on the observant world.

The ability to balance this effect will appear only on the "big twenty" in November in Johannesburg. Putin may not go there for the aggregate of legal reasons ( the Hague order and justice of the English type in South Africa) and security reasons: after a full -scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin avoids flying over large areas of international waters and insolless countries.

But even if he is not there, and even more so if he gets there, after the Chinese celebrations it is Trump, and not Putin will have to overcome the cold reception and prove that he is not isolated now and that he has everything in order with international relations. Including for this for this photo and verbal support to the same Putin, Modi and Si.

Alexander Baunov