Xi Refuses To Meet With Lukashenka?
21- 21.01.2025, 18:25
- 37,258
Two versions.
The other day the ruler of Belarus received a rebuff from the ‘socially close’ authorities of the DPRK. Lukashenka claimed that the North Korean leadership had offered him a meeting with Kim Jong-un. But Pyongyang quickly denied it, writes ‘Salidarnasts’.
The dictator's sister Kim Ye-jong, who serves as deputy head of the Central Committee of the Labour Party, said that there was no such proposal, although ‘the Belarusian side had strongly been hoping for contact with the DPRK at the highest level for at least two years.’
On top of that, she effectively told Minsk off:
‘If you hope to develop co-operation with us, it is important to make your intentions clear. I believe that truthfulness and honesty should be the basis for bilateral relations between countries.’
It must be a shame when even the world's biggest pariah has been dropping you for more than two years. After all, we could be ‘fighting imperialism’ together.
Not only that, another unpleasant thing happened. On 3 January Lukashenka said that he was going to visit China before the elections:
‘Such visits, one cannot refuse. Because this is the future of our state. What is a meeting with Xi Jinping and a visit to China? This is the future of our country. Co-operation with China is a great thing’.
Lukashenka announced the upcoming trip in detail and with pleasure:
‘It will take three days. I also need to see the Chinese museum there - they have started to build their own museum of the history of Belarus’.
One can even calculate the dates when Lukashenka was going to China, as it was said:
‘Consider it, you'll come back, and there is one week left before the vote’.
That is, the trip was supposed to take place between 15 and 20 January.
But in fact, Lukashenka went to Minsk city technopark instead of Beijing. Though he was saying:
‘It's impossible not to hold these planned events, as a sitting president, including a visit to the People's Republic of China, one of our strategic partners’.
That is, something extraordinary happened, since the visit to China scheduled for mid-January was cancelled less than two weeks before the departure date. Two versions seem to be the most probable.
Perhaps health problems prevented Aliaksandr Lukashenka from going on a three-day trip. Last week it was obvious that the ruler is not in the best shape. That is, his condition allowed him to hold ordinary meetings, but not a multi-hour flight.
The second option: at the last moment, the Chinese moved their ‘strategic partner’ to ‘later’. Yet, according to media reports, nothing extraordinary happened in China. Therefore, there was no particular need for rearranging Xi Jinping's schedule.
In the light of the story with Kim Jong-un, one can't rule out that Lukashenka was mistaking the wish for the reality when speaking about the invitation to Beijing. However, such a ‘joke’ in relations with Xi Jinping seems unlikely.
Perhaps the visit has been postponed rather than cancelled. But one way or another, the fact that the trip announced for mid-January did not take place testifies to that the year 2025 has not started according to Lukashenka's plan.
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