TIANJIN, China: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched down in the Chinese city of Tianjin on Saturday evening, Indian TV networks showed, a day before a summit that will be attended by leaders from more than 20 countries.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathering will be held in the northern port city on Sunday and Monday, days before a massive military parade in nearby Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will be among some 26 world leaders slated to attend the parade, though Modi was not on a list of attendees for the parade published by Chinese state media on Thursday.
Modi’s visit – his first to China since 2018 – comes straight after a trip to Japan, which pledged to invest $68 billion in India.
China and IndiA, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.
A thaw began last October when Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. Another 16 countries are affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
Xi began welcoming leaders including Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Egyptian Premier Moustafa Madbouly on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is also due to arrive in Tianjin ahead of the summit.
China and Russia have used the SCO – sometimes touted as a counter to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance – to deepen ties with Central Asian states.
Other leaders including Iranian and Turkish presidents Masoud Pezeshkian and Recep Tayyip Erdogan will also attend the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
Multiple bilateral meetings are expected to be held on the sidelines of the summit.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin will discuss the Ukraine conflict with Erdogan on Monday.
Turkiye has hosted three rounds of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine this year that have failed to break the deadlock over how to end the conflict, triggered when Moscow launched its invasion of its pro-European neighbor in February 2022.
Putin will also meet with his Iranian counterpart Pezeshkian to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program on Monday, a meeting that comes as Iran faces fresh Western pressure.
Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, triggered a “snapback” mechanism on Thursday to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran for failing to comply with commitments made in a 2015 deal over its nuclear program.
Russia’s foreign ministry warned that the reimposition of sanctions against Iran risked “irreparable consequences.”
Tehran and Moscow have been bolstering political, military and economic ties over the past decade as Russia drifted away from the West.
Relations between them grew even closer after Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine.
India’s Modi arrives in Tianjin ahead of summit hosted by China
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India’s Modi arrives in Tianjin ahead of summit hosted by China
- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathering will be held in the northern port city on Sunday and Monday
- Narendra Modi’s visit – his first to China since 2018 – comes straight after a trip to Japan
Trump says Zelensky ‘isn’t ready’ yet to accept US-authored proposal to end Russia-Ukraine war
- Trump said he was “disappointed” and suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward
- He also claimed Russia is “fine with it” even though Putin last week had said that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable
KYIV, Ukraine: President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “isn’t ready” to sign off on a US-authored peace proposal aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump was critical of Zelensky after US and Ukrainian negotiators completed three days of talks on Saturday aimed at trying to narrow differences on the US administration’s proposal. But in an exchange with reporters on Sunday night, Trump suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward.
“I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t,” Trump claimed in an exchange with reporters before taking part in the Kennedy Center Honors. The president added, “Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelensky’s fine with it. His people love it it. But he isn’t ready.”
To be certain, Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t publicly expressed approval for the White House plan. In fact, Putin last week had said that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable, even though the original draft heavily favored Moscow.
Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Zelensky since riding into a second White House term insisting that the war was a waste of US taxpayer money. Trump has also repeatedly urged the Ukrainians to cede land to Russia to bring an end to a now nearly four-year conflict he says has cost far too many lives.
Zelensky said Saturday he had a “substantive phone call” with the American officials engaged in the talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida. He said he had been given an update over the phone by US and Ukrainian officials at the talks.
“Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Trump’s criticism of Zelensky came as Russia on Sunday welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy in comments by the Kremlin spokesman published by Russia’s Tass news agency.
Dmitry Peskov said the updated strategic document, which spells out the administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision.
“There are statements there against confrontation and in favor of dialogue and building good relations,” he said, adding that Russia hopes this would lead to “further constructive cooperation with Washington on the Ukrainian settlement.”
The document released Friday by the White House said the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core US interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
Speaking on Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said efforts to end the war were in “the last 10 meters.”
He said a deal depended on the two outstanding issues of “terrain, primarily the Donbas,” and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russia controls most of Donbas, its name for the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, which, along with two southern regions, it illegally annexed three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is in an area that has been under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service. It needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.
Kellogg, who is due to leave his post in January, was not present at the talks in Florida.
Separately, officials said the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany would participate in a meeting with Zelensky in London on Monday.
As the three days of talks wrapped up, Russian missile, drone and shelling attacks overnight and Sunday killed at least four people in Ukraine.
A man was killed in a drone attack on Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region Saturday night, local officials said, while a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages. Kremenchuk is home to one of Ukraine’s biggest oil refineries and is an industrial hub.
Kyiv and its Western allies say Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing” the cold.
Three people were killed and 10 others wounded Sunday in shelling by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
