Exclusive: SCO summit optics, China’s Victory Day pageantry, and why the “Global South” wants a louder say on Ukraine

If you judged geopolitics by choreography, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin and China’s Victory Day parade told a simple story: Beijing and Moscow are selling a steadier, multipolar order while the West squabbles and sanctions. But beneath the flyovers and photo-ops sits a more complicated tale about tariffs, hedging, and how countries outside the transatlantic bubble want to shape any future peace process in Ukraine.

Hosting Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi, and a cast of Eurasian leaders, Xi Jinping used the summit to argue the SCO now bears “greater responsibilities” for keeping regional peace and stability — and for resisting bloc confrontation and one-sided sanctions. He also wrapped the SCO’s agenda in pro-UN language during a pre-summit sit-down with António Guterres, pitching China as a defender of multilateralism, not a wrecking ball.

Al Jazeera’s rundown of who showed up and why made the subtext clear: the SCO is an arena where India, China, Russia, and Central Asian states can test ideas for trade, security, and payments — all while Washington’s tariff volleys hang over the global economy. The scene around Tianjin, with Victory Day commemorations dovetailing into the summit, amplified that narrative of unity. State outlets and wire services alike leaned into images of military pomp and leader-to-leader bonhomie.

The parade — marking victory over fascism — provided the stagecraft: Xi welcomed Putin, underscoring their “no limits” closeness. But look closer, and the choreography wasn’t perfect. Modi’s absence from the parade serves as a reminder that India maintains strict boundaries on symbolism, despite its engagement with the SCO and preservation of Russian ties.

That nuance is the point, argues Elizabeth Wishnick, Senior Research Scientist, CNA, and Senior Research Scholar, Weatherhead, East Asian Institute, Columbia University:

“It’s true that Modi, Xi, and Putin appeared very friendly at the SCO Summit, but this doesn’t mean they’re moving forward with a trilateral axis. Modi had an interest in showing that he would not be pressured to downgrade India’s longstanding ties with Russia–though there is evidence of reduced purchases of Russian oil by Indian refineries. Also, India is not interested in joining Putin in creating an anti-Western bloc in the Global South, as India aspires to a more flexible multipolar world and has been developing ties with the US and other Western countries… Modi did not attend Xi’s big parade, showing the limits he’s willing to set to displays of bonhomie with Putin and Xi.”

She also flags the frictions: China’s backing of Pakistan and a mega-dam on the Brahmaputra, India’s QUAD role, and the fact that while both India and China have eased Russia’s wartime economic pain, it’s China supplying 80% of dual-use inputs — plus 5.8 million of North Korea’s ammunitions (22 mm and 152 mm artillery shells and 122 mm rockets) and 15,000 in personnel support for Russia’s Kursk front. That’s not a seamless triangle; it’s a wary Venn diagram.

Economically, the SCO is where China can coax more members into settling trade in yuan or at least experimenting with non-dollar rails. As Reuters put it, Central Asia is the testing ground for an “electro-yuan” push — digitized settlement plumbing that trims sanctions risk and tariff exposure. That’s a summit win Beijing can bank, especially with US tariffs jolting supply chains from semiconductors to solar.

On the political front, one reason the SCO’s voice on Ukraine is growing louder is that Washington’s own diplomacy is struggling to find traction beyond Europe. Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Chatham House, is blunt:

“The carefully choreographed chumminess at the SCO summit is a visual reminder that Russia’s war on Ukraine is just part of a global confrontation – where the United States’ recent targeting of India has helped nudge it towards the opposing side. The United States has used its tariff bludgeon against India ostensibly as a means of influencing Russia – but it is only doing so because the Trump administration remains unwilling to pressure Russia directly. For as long as this continues, US efforts risk only consolidating the coalition working against US interests, by antagonizing third countries without addressing the root cause of the open conflict in Ukraine. It was clear immediately after the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska that there was no “peace process,” because the claims made by the United States on what was agreed were immediately discounted by Russia. Now that that realization is slowly sinking in, we are back to where we were before the summit — with the added indignity of Putin openly mocking Trump by demonstrating which international relationships are now more important to him than the United States.”

Set the rhetoric aside, and the outcomes match the vibe. The much-ballyhooed Alaska meeting didn’t unlock a pathway on Ukraine; Moscow discounted US readouts almost immediately. Meanwhile, Xi used Tianjin to argue for a bigger SCO role in “regional peace,” not a Western-led formula — a signal to fence-sitters in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa that there are other forums to air ceasefire frameworks and sanctions fatigue.

Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, frames the wider dispute as a US overreach problem:

“Contrary to the US Government narrative, the Ukraine War resulted from the US push for dominance over the former Soviet Union. Instead of leaving Ukraine as a neutral country between Russia and Western Europe, the US strategists insisted on trying to bring Ukraine into the Western security system, i.e., NATO… The war started because of the coup and the subsequent US attempt to build Ukraine’s army as part of NATO. Russia resisted the NATO enlargement, and in return, the US attempted to isolate Russia diplomatically, financially, economically, technologically, and militarily. This US approach has failed because the US does not have the power to push China, India, Russia, and others to “fall into line” with the US demands. The SCO is a demonstration of the new multipolar world that will not be bullied by Trump’s demands on Truth Social. In recent weeks, he has made demands of Brazil, China, India, and Russia, all of which have been rebuffed. That is the new reality of a multipolar world. Rather than sulking — or escalating — the US should accept the end of NATO enlargement and stop making unilateral demands of other countries, engaging them in diplomacy and trade rather than by unilateral US demands and unilateral US tariffs… The US needs diplomacy, not military force, to resolve today’s crises.”

Brazil’s Zelensky-Lula contretemps, India’s hedging, Gulf states’ oil calculus, and African swing votes at the UN all say the same thing — any durable endgame in Ukraine will require buy-in (or at least acquiescence) from actors whose priorities don’t map neatly onto NATO or EU talking points. The SCO is one of the few tables where Russia sits with those actors as peers and where Beijing can sponsor language about security “indivisibility” without Western gatekeeping.

What Tianjin actually changed:

1. Optics became leverage. Victory Day images and summit camaraderie created a “coalition of the willing to wait”— countries signaling they won’t be rushed into Western timelines on Russia.
2. Payments plumbing moved up the agenda. With tariffs and secondary sanctions proliferating, more SCO economies are ready to test non-dollar trade and fintech pipes that route around US pressure. That’s long-haul, not a switch flip, but the direction is set.
3. India’s balancing act hardened. Delhi showcased autonomy: cordial with Putin and Xi at the summit, cool on the parade, and still deeply engaged with the US and the QUAD. Expect more case-by-case bargaining from India on energy, tech, and Ukraine language — not alignment.
4. The SCO enlarged its rhetorical mandate. Xi’s call for the bloc to carry “greater responsibilities” on regional peace plants a flag: if Western plans stall, expect China and Russia to tout SCO-adjacent formats — with Gulf, African, and Latin American partners — as alternative convening spaces on Ukraine.

None of this means a neat “SCO solution” is coming. The organization is too diverse, and India-Pakistan friction alone can jam consensus on basic definitions like terrorism. But Tianjin shows how the Global South’s center of gravity is shifting from abstention to agenda-setting. If the West wants a say in that process, it will need less lecturing and more trade-offs — on sanctions carve-outs, security guarantees, reconstruction finance, and the shape of European security after the guns fall silent.

Until then, the visuals will keep doing the work: parades, summits, and smiles that say “we can wait,” while pipelines, payment rails, and commodity flows are rewired in the background.