On the sidelines of the summit on Thursday, Modi held bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He also met Kyrgyzstan President Sooronbay Jeenbekov ahead of the SCO Council of Heads of State meeting on Friday. Jeenbekov was the Chair of the SCO Summit 2019. The prime minister arrived in the Kyrgyz capital on Thursday for the SCO summit, the first multilateral engagement post his re-election. The SCO is a China-led eight-member economic and security bloc with India and Pakistan being admitted to the grouping in 2017.

Source: dna June 14, 2019 17:48 UTC