Russia’s SCO Show Masks Shrinking Power, US Analyst Goble Says

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping used Monday’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kyrgyzstan to showcase deepening ties and promote their vision of a multipolar world, but veteran Russia analyst Paul Goble says the gathering is unlikely to disguise a deeper trend: Moscow is losing allies, influence and much of the soft power it once possessed. Putin and Xi began talks in Bishkek, where about a dozen other heads of state gathered for the two-day summit of the regional bloc, which seeks to position itself as a counterweight to the West.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif were also among those attending the SCO’s 25th-anniversary summit. Xi told Putin he was “happy” to see him and said Russian-Chinese ties had become “more solid,” while Putin said cooperation was “successfully developing on all fronts.” Russia’s economy has become increasingly dependent on China since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But Goble told Kyiv Post that the diplomatic spectacle in Bishkek should not be mistaken for a geopolitical turning point. “You may see some bilateral moves,” Goble said. “Talk shops that are regularly scheduled, as this one is, don’t tend to produce big developments that haven’t been signaled well in advance.” Other Topics of Interest Poland Opens Terrorism Probe Into Fire at Drone Factory The overnight blaze at a WB Electronics plant came amid heightened concern over suspected Russian hybrid operations in Europe. “I think a week from now, we won’t be talking about any spirit of Bishkek, or Bishkek as a turning point.” Russia’s shrinking circle Asked about Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s admission in an interview with Russian outlet RBC that Moscow today lacks the kind of allies the Soviet Union had during World War II, Goble was blunt. “Russia doesn’t have allies because Russia is, for most of the countries of the world, an enemy,” he said. “It’s busily destroying the international order that had existed from the late ’40s until very recently.” Goble stressed that the Soviet Union played an enormous role in defeating Nazi Germany, while Western aid was also crucial. “No one should ever be under any illusions that the Soviets did not play an enormous role in defeating Hitler, in blood and treasure,” he said. “Nor should anyone deny, as the Russians today tend to do, that the allies’ support, the aid that came in, played a key role.” But unlike World War II, when a common enemy brought Moscow and the West together, Goble argued that today Russia itself has become the adversary for much of the world. ‘Outcast countries rarely attract allies’ Instead, Goble said Russia increasingly finds itself grouped with internationally isolated states. “What we have are outcast states, states that others look at with a bad stance, and even with hostility. And Russia is one of those.” “Outcast countries may cause a lot of trouble, but they rarely attract allies,” he said. “People know that the cost of allying oneself with those people is too high and they’re not willing to pay it.” Goble said even countries maintaining close ties with Moscow are unlikely to align themselves with Russia’s war against Ukraine. “What you’re seeing is a gradual diminution of Russian power,” he said. Putin ‘destroyed most of Russian soft power’ For Goble, Moscow’s problem goes beyond formal alliances. “Russia is no longer attractive,” he said. “One of the things that Putin has managed to do is to have destroyed most of Russian soft power.” The image of Russia as a modern, developing power has largely disappeared, he said. “Now what you see is Russia uses brute force when it thinks it can get away with it, and that isn’t attractive to people. There are very few people who want to sign up with that.” Russia has massively deepened military and economic cooperation with Iran since invading Ukraine, while North Korea has provided troops and weapons to Moscow. But Goble rejected the idea that those relationships amount to genuine alliances. “The Iranians feel sufficiently isolated, and the North Koreans are sufficiently isolated, that they’ll cooperate with this other outcast,” he said. “But that’s because they’re all outcasts, not because they’re allies.” “This is cooperation driven because these countries can’t find allies, not because they’ve found one in Russia.” Ukraine’s resilience changes Washington’s calculus Goble also argued that Russia’s inability to defeat Ukraine has begun changing calculations in Washington. He said President Donald Trump “likes a winner” and that Ukraine’s continued battlefield resilience has increasingly demonstrated that Moscow is not going to achieve the sweeping victory Putin initially sought. “The continuing strength of the Ukrainian army has convinced even Trump that the Russians are not going to win,” Goble said. “The Ukrainians, by surviving, are going to win, as it were.” That means, he said, that if Washington wants a settlement, it increasingly has to convince Moscow that Russia must compromise. “The Russians are going to get something out of any agreement, but they’re not going to get what Putin wants, which is the extension of Russian dominance to Lviv, to the Polish border, and the extinction of the Ukrainian state,” Goble said. “If Putin keeps fighting, he’s going to lose more and more.” He pointed to Ukraine’s long-range strikes as one example of how the cost of the war is increasingly being felt inside Russia. “The Ukrainian drones have effectively created a gas crisis in Russia that is spreading rapidly beyond Russian borders, weakening Russian influence and power in the Caucasus and in Central Asia,” Goble said. “The longer this war goes on, the more such crises are going to emerge.” Russian attacks reinforce support for Ukraine Goble said Russia’s continued attacks on Ukrainian civilians are also shaping American perceptions of the war. “The constant Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine has reinforced a view among many Americans that the Russians are in fact the guilty party in this conflict,” he said. He argued that domestic politics also matter for Trump, particularly ahead of congressional elections. Americans, Goble said, remain broadly sympathetic toward Ukraine even if they disagree over the scale of US assistance. “You will see Ukrainian flags up in people’s yards and on their homes,” he said of communities in the United States. “You will not see Russian flags.” “Appearing to be more pro-Ukrainian than he was earlier is good politics domestically,” Goble said. For Goble, the contrast with Bishkek is striking. Putin can still stand beside Xi, Modi, Pezeshkian and other leaders and portray Russia as a pillar of an emerging multipolar world. But behind the summit imagery, Goble sees a country increasingly dependent on China, cooperating with Iran and North Korea because of mutual isolation, losing its soft power and paying mounting economic and political costs for its war against Ukraine. The SCO summit may provide Putin with photographs and declarations of cooperation. It does not, Goble argues, change the deeper trajectory of Russia’s declining influence and power.