Diplomacy

India used the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit to maintain a long-standing Russian partnership while again pressing for an end to the war and protecting its wider strategic autonomy. BISHKEK | 31 August-1 September 2026 | CurrentPulse News Desk Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bishkek on the margins of the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, their first meeting of 2026. The talks came after the two leaders met in New Delhi for the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit in December 2025 and followed the 27th India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic and Cultural Cooperation held in Moscow on 24 August. The bilateral agenda remained unusually broad. According to the Indian government, the leaders reviewed political, economic, defence, energy, space, mobility and people-to-people ties. That spread illustrates why Indi