The SCO’s position, along with that of China, was a disappointment for Russia, despite the effort of Russian leaders to explain it away. Gazeta, a Moscow-based daily, believed that

the SCO has given Russia exactly the amount of support that corresponds to their interests in the international arena, without hurting their relationship with the United States and the European countries and without seriously offending Moscow. The joint declaration the SCO members adopted at the summit in Dushanbe on 28 August is a classic example of the art of diplomacy. (Shermatova 2008, emphasis added)

Separately, some Russian analysts equated the wording of the Dushanbe Declaration with the statements of many EU members after the Medvedev–Sarkozy plan was signed.

The SCO’s apparent neutrality was, nonetheless, not necessarily a surprise for Moscow. Two days before the SCO summit, Russian analysts predicted such an outcome regarding China and the SCO’s policies of neutrality. Political analyst Vyacheslav Nikonov argued that Russia should not expect China’s support on this issue: ‘China has domestic problems. This is not only Taiwan but also Xinjiang Uyghur Region and Tibet. This problem will be a barrier to approving Russia’s decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia.’ For the same reason, ‘Russia cannot count on 100-percent support from SCO but [the] understanding of a considerable number of its members, or perhaps even all, is quite feasible. But there will be no formal support,’ he said (Interview with Interfax, 26 August 2008).

Despite this lack of support, as well as lack of criticism, regarding Russia’s policies, a source in the Russian delegation to Dushanbe revealed that the SCO leaders verbally expressed their approval of Moscow’s line. Still, in its final declaration, the SCO supported the principle of territorial integrity and opposed the use of force in interstate relations. Before the summit, President Hu was quoted as saying that he ‘understood the Russian position’, but explained that ‘we’ll be unable to officially side with Moscow’. Later, the Kazakh President was quoted apologising for having failed to support Moscow due to different reasons.

To explain the discrepancies between the SCO’s informal and formal positions, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, in his press conference after the summit, said that ‘Russia didn’t seek to persuade its partners to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia’. ‘Unlike certain Western partners, we prefer that every country should make [up] its mind with[out] any external pressure,’ Lavrov said. Moscow knew about American envoys’ visits to other states, during which they ‘told them what to say regarding the problem’. ‘Such sort of boorishness is not inherent in our political tradition,’ the Russian minister told journalists. In his address, Medvedev was said to have even thanked his colleagues ‘for the understanding and the unbiased assessment of Russia’s peacekeeping role’ (‘Allies let him down—Moscow’, Kommersant.com, 29 August 2008). A week after this, the Russian Ambassador to Beijing again expressed his ‘appreciation’ for China’s ‘understanding’ of Russia’s position (Wang 2008). Vitaliy Tretyakov (2008), Dean of the Moscow State University Higher School of Television, went a step further by claiming that the ‘silence’ of China was in fact recognition of Russia’s right to do what it did, and that other factors, including its own worries about separatism, were not, in fact, the main reasons for China’s stance.

In mid September, Prime Minister Putin also offered his own story. In an interview, he alluded to the flexibility inherent in the Sino–Russian strategic relationship in saying:

This [China’s] position has absolutely not disappointed us. Moreover, we perfectly understand the People’s Republic of China’s foreign and home political priorities and do not want to put them in some uncomfortable situation. We have openly told our Chinese partners about this. I said it myself while attending the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. We relieved them from this responsibility in Russian–Chinese relations beforehand…In terms of international law, one country’s recognition is enough for the appearance of a new entity under international law. (‘Russia not disappointed by China’s position on Abkhazia, S. Ossetia’, Interfax, 13 September 2008)

The Russians, therefore, understood the limits of their strategic relations with China.