Putin and the Chinese president have expanded the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a club founded in 2001 with Russia, China, and Central Asian powers, to include India, Iran, and Pakistan as a counterweight to the West.

On Wednesday, Putin will hold a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the July 3–4 SCO summit in the Kazakh capital, Astana, the Kremlin said.

He is due to meet Xi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leaders of Azerbaijan, Mongolia, and Pakistan before an informal dinner hosted by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

“The leaders of the SCO member countries will discuss the current state and prospects for further deepening multifaceted cooperation within the organization and improving its activities,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

India said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected in Moscow later this month, will not attend. He is sending Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar instead.

Russia and China view the SCO, which promotes common approaches to external security threats such as drug trafficking and focuses on countering any domestic instability, as a means to project their influence across Asia.

At last year’s virtual summit, the group issued a statement critical of what it called the negative impact of “unilateral and unlimited expansion of global missile defense systems by certain countries or groups of countries,” without directly referring to NATO expansion and Western military assistance to Ukraine.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. Since then, Xi and Putin have deepened their partnership.

The two leaders believe the U.S.-dominated post-Cold War era is crumbling. The U.S. casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.

The U.S. views Xi and Putin as authoritarian rulers who have quashed free speech and exerted tight control at home over the media and courts.

The SCO traces its history back to 1996, when its forerunner was founded as a way to coordinate efforts against external threats such as drug trafficking, and has traditionally focused on combating any internal instability.