It will be Putin’s first time attending a global summit since a brief armed uprising by a group of mercenaries rocked Moscow last week.

At a virtual summit of the SCO on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host President Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan and leaders of other SCO countries. The summit is expected to focus on the security situation in the region and ways to improve connectivity and trade.

Putin will attend his first international summit since a brief armed uprising by a group of mercenaries that rocked Moscow last week.

Iran will be formally welcomed into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a new permanent member at the summit to be hosted by India.

The summit is expected to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine and improving cooperation among SCO member states, people with knowledge of the situation said. He said that there is a possibility of discussion on increasing connectivity and commerce.

The summit is taking place in the backdrop of the over three-year standoff between Indian and Chinese troops along the eastern Ladakh border and two weeks after Prime Minister Modi’s high-profile visit to the US.

The SCO, comprising India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is an influential economic and security bloc and has emerged as one of the largest intra-regional international organizations.

During the SCO summit in Samarkand on 16 September last year, India took over as the rotating chair of the organisation.

A virtual summit with the theme “Towards a Secure SCO” will take place on Tuesday, and attendees will include the heads of the two SCO organizations, the Secretariat and the SCO RATS (Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure).

The acronym SECURE was coined by Prime Minister Modi at the 2018 SCO summit and stands for Security; Economy and Business; connectivity; Unity; respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; and environment.

The heads of six international and regional organizations have also been invited to the summit.

These groups are the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Conference on Dialogue and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

Many important things happened during India’s SCO chairmanship. Five new pillars of SCO cooperation were established by New Delhi. Startups and innovation, traditional medicine, inclusiveness in the internet world, youth empowerment and common Buddhist heritage are some of them.

India took the initiative to set up an Expert Working Group on Traditional Medicine and a Special Working Group on Startups and Innovation.

One of them said, “We aim to make significant contributions in each of these areas.

India has a strong focus on strengthening people-to-people ties to take forward Prime Minister Modi’s vision of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkom (the world is one family), the source said.

Under the Indian Presidency, a number of historic events were organized with the aim of strengthening bilateral ties.

India began participating in the SCO in 2005 as an observer state. At the Astana summit in 2017, it joined the SCO as a full member.

India has expressed a strong desire to strengthen its security-related cooperation with the SCO and its RATS, which focuses on security and defence-related topics.

The presidents of Russia, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan established the SCO at a conference in Shanghai in 2001. In 2017, Pakistan joined India as a permanent member of the organization.