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Leaders of Russia and China Meet at a Central Asian Summit in a Show of Deepening Cooperation

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia July 2, 2024. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia July 2, 2024. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS
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Leaders of Russia and China Meet at a Central Asian Summit in a Show of Deepening Cooperation

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia July 2, 2024. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia July 2, 2024. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Wednesday for the second time in as many months as they visited Kazakhstan for a session of an international group founded to counter Western alliances.
Putin and Xi last got together in May when the Kremlin leader visited Beijing to underscore their close partnership that opposes the US-led democratic order and seeks to promote a more “multipolar” world.
Now they’ll be holding meetings amid the annual session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization taking place Wednesday and Thursday in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
Indeed, the Russian leader on Wednesday had multiple meetings with other leaders on the sidelines of the summit, all diligently aired by Russian state TV.
At a meeting with Xi on Wednesday, Putin hailed the SCO as “one of the key pillars of a fair, multipolar world order,” and said ties between Moscow and Beijing are “experiencing the best period in their history.”

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New UK Prime Minister Starmer Assembles Cabinet for the First Meeting: ‘Now We Get to Work’

Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)
Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)
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New UK Prime Minister Starmer Assembles Cabinet for the First Meeting: ‘Now We Get to Work’

Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)
Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer chairs the first meeting of his cabinet in 10 Downing Street, following a landslide Labour win in Thursdays General Election, in London, Britain, July 6, 2024. (Pool via Reuters)

Prime Minister Keir Starmer held his first Cabinet meeting Saturday as his new government takes on the massive challenge of fixing a heap of domestic woes and winning over a public weary from years of austerity, political chaos and a battered economy.

Starmer welcomed the new ministers around the table at 10 Downing St., saying it had been the honor of his life to be asked by King Charles III to form a government in a ceremony that officially elevated him to prime minister.

“We have a huge amount of work to do, so now we get on with our work,” he said.

Starmer’s Labour Party delivered the biggest blow to the Conservatives in their two-century history Friday in a landslide victory on a platform of change.

Among a raft of problems they face are boosting a sluggish economy, fixing a broken health care system, and restoring trust in government.

“Just because Labour won a big landslide doesn’t mean all the problems that the Conservative government has faced has gone away,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

In his first remarks as prime minister Friday after the meeting “kissing of hands” ceremony with Charles at Buckingham Palace, Starmer said he would get to work immediately, though he cautioned it would take some time to show results.,

“Changing a country is not like flicking a switch,” he said as enthusiastic supporters cheered him outside his new official residence at 10 Downing. “This will take a while. But have no doubt that the work of change begins — immediately.”

Starmer singled out several of the big items, such as fixing the revered but hobbled National Health Service and securing its borders, a reference a larger global problem across Europe and the US of absorbing an influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty as well as drought, heat waves and floods attributed to climate change.

Conservatives struggled to contain the flow of migrants arriving across the English Channel, failing to live up to ex-Prime Minister’s Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats.”

Starmer has said he will scrap the Conservatives controversial plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The plan had cost hundreds of millions of pounds (dollars) without a single flight taking off.

“Labour is going to need to find a solution to the small boats coming across the channel,” Bale said. “It’s going to ditch the Rwanda scheme, but it’s going to have to come up with other solutions to deal with that particular problem.”

Suella Braverman, a Conservative hard liner on immigration who is a possible contender to replace Sunak as party leader, criticized Starmer's plan to end the Rwanda pact.

“Years of hard work, acts of Parliament, millions of pounds been spent on a scheme which had it been delivered properly would have worked,” she said Saturday. “There are big problems on the horizon which will be I’m afraid caused by Keir Starmer.”