The member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are actively preparing for the upcoming summit of this organization in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, 2025.
At a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia and China intend to bring the SCO to a new – “infinitely ascending” – level. At the same time, he acknowledged that Moscow has many debatable issues with China, India and the CIS countries, the solution of which requires “finding a balance of interests and not using threats and ultimatums.” This task looks difficult, in particular, due to the problems associated with the tense situation in relations both between the SCO members and between states that are only applying for membership in this organization.
Speaking in July at a meeting with the foreign ministers of the SCO member states, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the future policy of the organization, its “Shanghai spirit” should be consonant with the well-known five principles of peaceful coexistence. He noted that, no matter how the international situation changes, the SCO must continue to serve as a guarantor of common, joint and sustainable security. Follow the path of strategic dialogue to resolve differences, bring positions closer and strengthen mutual trust among SCO members.
However, during the preparations for the Tianjin summit, serious differences emerged in the positions of India and Pakistan regarding the assessment of recent events in the Indian-administred part of Kashmir. Back in April, Pakistani militants, members of the Resistance Front, recognized in Delhi as a terrorist organization (which claimed responsibility for the attack), shot dead 26 peaceful Indian tourists in the Pahalgam area. The consequences of this terrorist attack were a serious complication of Indian-Pakistani diplomatic relations and cooperation between Delhi and Islamabad. Later, in early May, the conflict escalated into large-scale armed clashes along the entire length of the interstate border with the use of combat aircraft and missile forces. The Indian Air Force has attacked terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir.
For its part, Islamabad, although it expressed concern about the deaths of tourists, disagreed with the sharp reaction of the Indian leadership, calling it “unfair and politically motivated.“
On May 10, the conflicting parties managed, with the active mediation of US President Trump, to reach an agreement on a cease–fire and the withdrawal of their troops from the border.
During the preparations for the SCO summit, India demanded an official condemnation from the organization of Pakistan, another permanent member of the SCO, for supporting terrorism.
At a meeting of SCO Defense Ministers in Qingdao, China, in June this year, India succeeded in condemning Islamabad’s position in this conflict, but the joint declaration was drawn up without the necessary references to Pakistan’s role, which displeased Delhi and the Indian delegation refused to sign the declaration. New Delhi’s tough stance on zero tolerance for terrorism has created additional difficulties during the preparation of the summit documents. In addition, Prime Minister Modi’s participation in the Tianjin summit is also questionable.
The accession of India and Pakistan to the SCO as permanent members was not an easy decision. Prior to that, both countries had participated in the work of this organization only as observers. During the SCO summit in Ufa in 2015, the former President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, in conversation with the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed serious concerns about the correctness of the decision to admit these countries to the SCO.
According to him, “these states are not ordinary, but have in their possession nuclear weapons, and their accession can not only alter the political map, but also the balance of power.” In addition, Karimov, and then other summit participants, drew attention to the ongoing tense and sometimes hostile relations between India and Pakistan over the territorial dispute over the division of the disputed territory of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir along the Radcliffe Line.
This dispute has been going on for 78 years since 1947, and has led to three bloody wars and numerous minor border conflicts between these States. The difficulty of deciding on their membership was that the applicant country could not be in a state of armed conflict with another State or States.
In the end, the general decision was announced by Russia’s President Putin.: “A new stage of SCO development is beginning. For the first time, the procedure for accepting new members – India and Pakistan – is being launched.” Thus, it was only at the Astana summit in 2017 that both states became full members of the SCO, since due to Karimov’s “special” position at the 2016 Tashkent summit, the admission of new SCO members was postponed for a year. At that time, many experts expressed the opinion that real diplomatic levers might be found within the SCO to resolve this difficult, deep-rooted conflict, but concrete measures however have not been developed.
India has yet another long-standing border dispute – with China – over the Aksai Chin region, located between China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Pakistan and India, which considers it part of the Ladakh union territory. At the moment, the border conflict in Tibet has been put on “pause”, although it has not been resolved. Therefore, new disputes cannot be ruled out in the near future.
Given the controversial outcome of the admission of India and Pakistan to the SCO, another problem for preserving the unity and integrity of the organization is the new risks that may arise if new members are admitted. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Ryzhenkov drew attention to this problem in Tianjin. He stated, in particular, that “the entry into the SCO of states that disregard its principles or transfer their bilateral problems to its platform is inappropriate and harmful.”
The leadership of Russia, which is one of the founding countries of the SCO, is not indifferent to how appropriate is the process of increasing cooperation between the SCO and Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have applied to access the organization as full members.
Since 2015, these two countries have had the status of an SCO dialogue partner. At the same time, in 2020 and 2023, both of these states participated in a bilateral armed conflict, as a result of which the Azerbaijani Armed Forces defeated the Armenian armed formations, returned the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as 7 previously occupied Azerbaijani regions, and forced the hundred thousand Armenian population of Karabakh to flee to Armenia.
However, since then, both sides have not been able to resolve their bilateral problems and have not signed a peace treaty, thus, from a legal point of view, they are still at war.
In spite of Yerevan still having the status of an ally of Russia, its relations with Moscow this year have reached a historic low for the entire post-Soviet period and continue to deteriorate. The Armenian leadership has declared a pro-European course for its country, and the Armenian parliament has legislated a bill on Armenia’s intention to join the EU.
The Pashinyan government is consistently working towards a complete break with the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) and the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization), which, in turn, are official partners of the SCO. The campaign launched in Yerevan against the Armenian Apostolic Church and its leadership also contradicts the values and basic principles of the SCO Charter.
After the victory over Armenia, with the active help of Turkey, the ambitions of the Azerbaijani leadership noticeably increased, and it began to consider its country as a full-fledged and independent object of regional security in Transcaucasia. At the same time, Baku is trying to belittle Moscow’s role in the region and give Washington the palm in peacemaking.
This, in particular, can explain Baku’s plans to transfer the protection of the Zangezur transport corridor through the Armenian Syunik region to the American Private Military Contractor for 100 years, which was regarded by neighboring Iran, a member of the SCO, as a threat to its northern border regions.
Based on the above-mentioned actions of the Azerbaijani leadership and its openly Russophobic policy aimed, in particular, at supporting the Kiev regime and condemning Russia’s military operation as an operation of the “occupying Russian forces” in Ukraine, the Russian leadership should probably weigh the pros and cons and decide on its position regarding the expediency of Azerbaijan’s admission to the SCO.
That said, it should also be taken into account that according to the current rules of this organization, applicants for the status of a member state must strictly comply with the Charter and other SCO documents, including the Treaty on Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, which provides for non-participation in unions, organizations and actions hostile to other member states. That is why, according to Russian experts, both Baku and Yerevan candidates do not meet these criteria yet.
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