Beijing: Putin ally Lukashenko meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping

• Xi received Lukashenko in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Wednesday.
• The two leaders agreed in September to strengthen their ties.
• The meeting took place a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made some of the bluntest remarks.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a state visit that comes as the West warns China against providing military aid to Putin’s conflict in Ukraine.

Xi received Lukashenko in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Wednesday before the two began formal talks. Details of the conversations have yet to be published by either party.

It is their first face-to-face meeting since the two leaders agreed in September to strengthen their ties to an “all-weather comprehensive strategic cooperation” on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan, which Putin also attended.

The visit by Belarus’s president, who allowed Russian troops to stage their initial incursion into Ukraine last year, comes as tensions between the US and China have risen in recent weeks, with Washington concerned that Beijing is considering sending lethal aid to the Kremlin’s struggling war effort. Beijing has refuted these allegations.

The meeting took place a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made some of the bluntest remarks to date on how the US would respond to any lethal support China provided to Russia.

During a visit to Kazakhstan, Blinken warned that Washington will pursue Chinese enterprises or citizens implicated in an effort to deliver lethal help to Moscow for its war in Ukraine.

Beijing – which professes to be a neutral party in the war – has pushed back on the American allegation that is considering sending lethal aid. According to the Foreign Ministry, China was “actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis,” while the US was “pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine.”

In a paper pushing for peace negotiations to end the year-long war, Beijing presented a 12-point position on the “political solution” to the crisis last week. But, its release was attacked by Western officials, who accused China of already siding with Russia.

According to a statement from the Belarusian government, Lukashenko also met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday and asked for the two countries to “intensify” their cooperation.

“We have no closed topics for cooperation. We cooperate in all avenues. Most importantly, we have never set ourselves the task of being friends or working against third countries,” Lukashenko told Li per the readout.

The deepening of ties between Minsk and Beijing comes alongside a years-long downturn in Belarus’ relations with the European Union and as it may seek to diversify its Russia-dependent economy.

In response to Moscow’s aggressiveness, the US and its allies imposed sweeping sanctions on the former Soviet state after Lukashenko authorized Russian soldiers to invade Ukraine via the 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) Ukrainian-Belarusian border north of Kyiv.

The European Union also does not recognize the results of Lukashenko’s 2020 election triumph – which provoked major pro-democracy riots in the country and were followed by a deadly government crackdown.

There have been fears throughout the conflict in Ukraine that Belarus will again be used as a launching ground for another Russian offensive, or that Lukashenko’s own troops would join the war. Before visiting Moscow earlier this month, Lukashenko claimed there is “no way” his country would send troops into Ukraine unless it is attacked.

Both China and Belarus have previously stated that the US does not want the conflict to end.

Earlier this month, before traveling to Moscow to meet with Putin, Lukashenko told reporters that he wished to see “peaceful dialogue” and accused the US of obstructing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from negotiating.

Beijing has made similar assertions, with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi saying at a security conference in Munich earlier this month that China does not “add fuel to the fire,” and is “against reaping benefits from this crisis,” alluding to regular Chinese propaganda messaging that the US is intentionally prolonging the war to advance its own geopolitical interests and increase the profits of its arms manufacturers.

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