Russia’s Lavrov to visit Myanmar
MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will travel to Myanmar on Wednesday for meetings with the conflict-wracked country’s junta leaders, his ministry said. As Moscow’s ties with the West unravel over the intervention in Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to pivot the country towards the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
“Talks are planned with the foreign minister and with the Myanmar leadership,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Tuesday. She added that defence and security cooperation would be on the agenda among other topics.
Russia and its ally China have been accused of arming Myanmar’s junta with weapons used to attack civilians since last year’s coup. More than 1,500 civilians have been killed in a military crackdown since the coup on February 1, 2021.
Last week, the announcement of the junta’s execution of four democracy activists was condemned by the UN Security Council in a rare consensus on the post-coup crisis. The statement was endorsed by Russia and China-the junta’s two allies that have previously shielded it at the UN.
Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was in Moscow on a “private” visit in July and reportedly met officials from Moscow’s space and nuclear agencies. In July, Lavrov visited Egypt, CongoBrazzaville, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, a bomb blast and a spate of shootings in a Myanmar-China border town have killed two people and wounded at least nine, rescue workers and locals said on Tuesday. No group has so far claimed the attacks in Muse, Myanmar’s main gateway to China, which is home to several militia groups jockeying for control over lucrative casinos and the drug trade.
One woman died and five people were wounded in a bomb attack on a police traffic post on Monday, said a local NGO worker who requested anonymity. Later that night, the police station was attacked “with small arms and heavy weapons”, the worker said, killing another person and leaving four wounded.
A member of a volunteer rescue group who helped transport people to hospital confirmed the two deaths but put the wounded tolls higher, saying six people, five of them militia members, had been injured in the bombing, and another five injured in the police station attack.
A separate, drive-by shooting on Tuesday morning injured two more suspected militia members, both the NGO worker and the rescuer said. Local media also reported the attacks. A police spokesman for the area could not be reached for comment.
Muse is home to several militia groups controlled by Myanmar’s army-which has an agreement with China not to station troops along the border. The military uses the militias as proxies in a long-running conflict with ethnic rebel groups which operate in the area, including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).
TNLA spokesman Major Tar Aik Kyaw told AFP his group was not involved in the Muse attacks. Violence has soared across Myanmar since the military’s coup last year, with the junta leading a bloody crackdown on dissent in addition to its long-running conflicts with the ethnic groups. Muse lies on the path of a proposed $8.9 billion high-speed rail link from China’s landlocked Yunnan province to Myanmar’s west coast, part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
But the region is awash with weapons and a centre for meth production as armed rebels and militias jostle for a share of any potential windfall. In 2018, two Chinese nationals were among 19 people killed when ethnic rebels attacked security force posts and a casino near Muse. — AFP