Vladimir Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Tianjin, China, 1 September 2025. Photo: EPA/SUO TAKEKUMA

Vladimir Putin has defended his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in a speech to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin, the Associated Press reported on Monday.

Describing the resignation and departure of Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 as a “coup d'état” that ultimately triggered the Russian invasion, Putin said that the war in Ukraine had been “supported and provoked by the West”, which he also accused of making “constant attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO”.

Putin was given the red-carpet treatment upon his arrival for the two-day meeting in Tianjin on Sunday, where he joined the leaders of other SCO members and partners including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is making his first visit to China in seven years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Prior to his departure for Tianjin, Putin told China’s Xinhua news agency that Moscow and Beijing stood together against “discriminatory sanctions” on global trade, Politico reported. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, meanwhile, called the ties between the two countries the “most stable, mature and strategically significant among major countries”.

Putin, who rarely makes multiday foreign visits, is due to remain in China until Wednesday when he will join Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Modi in Beijing for a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The SCO, a Eurasian political, economic and security organisation, was established by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in 2001 in an attempt to counter a world in which the United States was the sole superpower. Since then, India, Iran, Pakistan and Belarus have all joined the organisation, with several other countries being granted observer or partner status.