The West Got Its Nose Wiped

What the foreign media wrote about the SCO summit

A week after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, the world media, which closely followed the event, continue to discuss it. The general message of the publications is that the era of US global leadership has come to an end, and it’s time for the West to acknowledge this.

The summit with the participation of 20 world leaders demonstrated the intention of these countries to abandon the current world order in opposition to the United States. Eurasian leaders eagerly met the Russian leader at the SCO summit, The New York Times writes. And Trump has a lot to do with it. After all, he not only welcomed the Russian president with honors in Alaska, offering cooperation to an alleged global “pariah,” but also “clashed with the leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa, pushing them closer to the Russian leader.”

“Russia has built a network of relationships that matter to the Russian economy, that legitimize the Putin system and that make the war’s impact on Russia smaller than it perhaps otherwise would be,” Michael Kimmage, director of the Washington-based Kennan Institute, commented on the developments.

“NATO – fatally undermined by an isolationist US and an enfeebled Europe – is a paper tiger,” writes Daily Mail.

According to the author of the article, in case of a direct military confrontation between the Alliance and the SCO member-states, NATO “may as well run up the white flag at Dover.”

“Across the Atlantic, Trump’s White House needs to understand that alienating traditional allies such as India will only drive them into the arms of Xi and Putin’s axis of authoritarianism… A new and darker era is slowly emerging,” the material elaborates.

The Global South demonstrated solidarity with Russia at the SCO summit, writes Le Figaro. The reality is that Asian developing countries jumped at the opportunity in Tianjin to show “the monumental fig sign” to the West. All of them refuse to boycott Russia, categorically reject the West’s right to lecture Russia, reinforcing it with economic sanctions. In such a diplomatic environment, the Europeans should very carefully think out a strategy for finding the right balance. One should not lecture the Asian powers, risking that they will finally side with the Russian camp.

Chinese, Russian, Indian leaders pledge cooperation  at the SCO Summit, in a message to Trump, writes the Wall Street Journal. While in the The South China Morning Post’s opinion piece experts suggest that it is precisely Western pressure that encourages the SCO countries to become more united.

The partnership within the SCO between Russia, India and China can significantly change the global balance of power, Al Jazeera reports. The myth of Russia’s international isolation has finally collapsed, which is of particular concern to European countries. “This block has every chance of becoming an alternative center in the fields of economics, energy, security and trade,” the author of the article summarizes.

CNN believes that the Putin – Xi Jinping Summit in Beijing has become a symbol of the strengthening union of their countries. The Russian leader does not bend to the demands of the West, while the Chinese leader demonstrates ambitions in an attempt to lead a new world order: “The meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was the latest show of solidarity between the two strongmen as Putin shrugs off Western pressure to end its war on Ukraine, and Xi casts his country as a new leader of world governance, at a time when Trump’s foreign policy is upending the globe.”

The heads of Russia and China met at the SCO forum as two old friends, writes Le Monde. “The Sino-Russian negotiations between the two powers are like between  two friends, face to face. The bilateral relations are at an unprecedentedly high level, Putin said. For his part, Xi Jinping praised the “comprehensive strategic cooperation” between the two countries and confirmed the desire to work together to “build a more equitable and reasonable system of global governance” – that is, a system less oriented towards the West.”

Amid the general strengthening of relations between Russia and China, concrete steps were taken at the Summit to develop them, Bloomberg reports. This strategic rapprochement between the two countries was a response to Western sanctions pressure and US trade challenges.:

“As Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Putin shared bonhomie over tea in Beijing, it was announced that an agreement had been reached to reorient gas supplies from fields that previously served Europe to China.

Xi and Putin have pushed their nations closer together since Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Xi is using a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization security bloc and a major military parade in the Chinese capital this week to tighten relations with Putin and other world leaders, especially Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

That diplomatic push comes after US President Donald Trump has slapped nations around the world, including China and India, with tariffs on their exports… The warming Beijing-Moscow ties have benefited both sides while Russia’s economy grapples with Western sanctions levied over its attack on Ukraine. Bilateral trade rose to a record $245 billion in 2024, up 68% from 2021, according to Chinese customs data.”

Experts from The Washington Post write that the Tianjin Summit itself has become a platform for strengthening the image of many leaders who, despite all Western sanctions, have managed to avoid diplomatic isolation:

“Even if the meeting in Tianjin achieves little, analysts said that simply attending can be valuable for autocratic governments and leaders  – such as Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian – to show they are not isolated despite Western sanctions.

Putin used the summit to burnish Russia’s image as an important global power, blaming the West for the war in Ukraine and… repeated his claim that the “root causes of the crisis” must be removed.”

Putin’s statements were reviewed in more detail in Tagesspiegel: “The head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, sharply criticized the NATO countries at the opening of the SCO summit. In particular, he blamed the West for the conflict in Ukraine. “This crisis was the result of a coup d’etat in Ukraine, supported and provoked by the West,” the Russian leader said. “The second reason is the incessant attempts by the West to draw Ukraine into NATO.” Russia has previously cited the accession to NATO of several Central and Eastern European countries since the 1990s as one of the “root causes” of the military operation in Ukraine.”