The topic of this week's Majlis was the latest summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on June 9.
For the first time since 2001, new members were admitted to the SCO, with India and Pakistan joining China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Several SCO officials, including host President Nursultan Nazarbaev, called it a "historic" day.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said: "The expansion will undoubtedly help the SCO become a more powerful organization." He added that the addition of new members would also increase the SCO's "political, economic, and humanitarian influence."
But there are different opinions about how powerful the SCO is, or can ever be.
Muhammad Tahir, RFE/RL's media relations manager, moderated the Majlis panel discussion on the recent SCO summit. Joining the talk from Vietnam was Jacob Zenn, an analyst of Eurasian Affairs for The Jamestown Foundation and also a non-resident research fellow of the Center for Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies. Alex Melikishvili, a senior analyst of the risk environment in the Caucasus and Central Asia for IHS Markit Country Risk, participated from Washington.
As usual, I also took part in the debate from RFE/RL's headquarters in Prague.
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