President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are in the Kazakh capital Astana for the two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Now, the annual event has been dominated by China and Russia as they seek to shape regional developments since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

India, Pakistan, Iran, and other Central Asian countries are also members of the group. So let's unpack some of this with Sergey Rodchenko.

He's a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University.

Thank you for your time.

Now, the language that came out of the summit last year had a lot to say about NATO, about the war in Ukraine, even if it didn't reference it directly.

What do we expect the focus to be this year?

Much of the same.

The grand proclamations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization do not really matter.

It's one of the most inefficient organizations out there.

They don't actually do much.

But what they do allow people to do is to have conversations.

So we are expecting Putin and Xi Jinping to meet on the sidelines of the summit.

Also, Erdogan from Turkey is there.

So it's going to be very interesting to observe what is being discussed.

But Ukraine is probably going to be part of the conversation. And, Sergey, you mentioned Recep Tayyip Erdogan there.

Now, he is a member of NATO.

So how does that work?

What are his goals when it comes to this summit?

Well, I like to see Erdogan as representing NATO at this what is sometimes called dictator's club.

However, jokes aside, Turkey has, of course, very serious interests in Central Asia.

And it's natural that when Central Asia is discussed, Turkey wants to be at the or near the table.

We also know that Erdogan and Putin will meet to talk about Syria and Ukraine.

That's according to Putin's foreign policy aid. Now, Belarus is also a new member this year.

So how does that advance the summit's goals, certainly China and Russia's goals?

Well, it doesn't really.

I mean, it was strange that Belarus was not part of that organisation.

It was set up in 2001 with Central Asian states plus Russia and China.

And this was always seen as a place where Russia and China sort out their problems over Central Asia.

But I guess it was also called dictator's club for the reason that all of the countries were effective with tyrannies that were part of that organisation until India joined, that is to say.

Well, now with Lukashenko joining, that seems to be part of the natural trend of countries like that to stick together. And just taking a bit more of a wider look, hey, you've been referring to it, but when it comes to China and Russia, could you tell us a bit more about how they're trying to reshape that world order?

Well, they have their vision, which is directed against the United States in the sense that they, you know, they're pushing for what they call a multipolar world order where their influence and their status is much greater.

And this regional organisations like Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is part of that vision.

But this is not to say that they agree on everything among themselves.

They are joined by a shared anti-American agenda, but they also have certain tensions.

And certainly Central Asia is one of the places where they have those tensions. All right, Sergei Srechenko, thank you so much for that analysis.

Appreciate your time.