Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi held hands as they greeted Xi Jinping at a summit in China on Monday, 1 September. They walked side-by-side as they met before the second day of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in which 20 leaders across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East gathered for a powerful show of Global South solidarity. The Russian president arrived in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Sunday for a rare four-day visit to Moscow’s largest trading partner and was met with a warm welcome by top-ranking city officials. Not long after arrival, Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a sideline meeting in which they discussed recent contacts between Moscow and Washington, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told Russian media without elaborating further.

As relations between India and the United States sour, China will host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a regional security summit this weekend.

The talks come with steep US tariffs imposed on India and Putin under threat of sanctions over Ukraine.