'Lukashenka Comes To Moscow Just For Sake Of It'

Putin and the Belarusian dictator "suddenly began to talk a lot about negotiations".

Political observer Valery Karbalevich draws attention to the peculiarities of Lukashenka's latest visit to Putin on Radio Svaboda.

If during the last meetings they said almost nothing about the war in Ukraine, this time the talks were almost entirely devoted to it.

The second peculiarity that the observer draws attention to is that Lukashenka has never before identified himself with Russia so much as he did during this meeting.

"I see a very interesting twist here. Vladimir Putin is very concerned about the Peace Forum in Switzerland that Ukraine has initiated. There will presumably be quite a few leaders of different countries there. And this forum is clearly not in Russia's favour. It is concerned about this and would like to neutralise this somehow. And so, with the help of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, Putin tried to neutralise this forum".

As Karbalevich notes, Putin and Lukashenka "suddenly started talking a lot about negotiations. At that, on the basis of the "Istanbul Document", which was initialled by the parties in the first months after the war started. It was remarkable because Russia was ready to make big concessions".

The analyst reminds that according to the agreements reached in Istanbul, the line of demarcation should run along the border that was fixed before the Russian aggression began in 2022. In exchange, Ukraine refuses to join NATO.

"This is the carrot that Russia is offering Ukraine and the West. It hopes that Ukraine will fall for it. And in this way it will be possible to disrupt the Swiss forum. Lukashenka came just for the sake of presenting this new idea of Putin," Karbalevich believes.