How Ukraine makes Putin's regional project crumble

Mirziyoyev's breach of diplomatic protocol signals a tectonic shift in Russia's former backyard, observers said, as the war in Ukraine drags for more than 200 days and is marred by allegations of war crimes and a litany of military setbacks. The previous year, Russia had brokered a peace deal between CTSO member Armenia and Azerbaijan and deployed thousands of peacekeepers to the region after a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated into a weeks-long war that saw Azerbaijan's forces gain large swaths of territory. "Even before the war, Russia needed China more than China needed Russia. After the war began, this dependence only got stronger," Temur Umarov, a Sinologist and expert with Carnegie Politika, a Moscow-based think-tank, told Al Jazeera. Welcoming Xi. On the SCO summit's first day, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov made Putin wait for him before issuing a joint statement - even though Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military base, and at least one million of its citizens work as labour migrants in Russia. Some observers believed Russia's struggles in Ukraine have only magnified the eclipse of Russia's clout in former Soviet republics, which had already begun to wane. "The process began earlier and just became more visible. They felt that Russia is not an indisputable leader in their regions, and are shaping their policies in accordance with reality," Sergey Bizyukin, an exiled opposition activist from the western Russian city of Ryazan, told Al Jazeera. Russia's weakness in Ukraine has jump-started processes similar to the ones that made the USSR collapse, she said.