The Mercury News

China welcomes Belarusian president

- By David Pierson

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a three-day visit in which China's top leader, Xi Jinping, is expected to meet with him, lending support to one of Russia's staunchest allies amid growing concerns in the United States and Europe about China's position on the war in Ukraine.

Lukashenko, who has led Belarus since 1994, allowed Russia to use his country as a staging ground to invade Ukraine more than a year ago, which resulted in Western sanctions against Belarus. A 68-year-old authoritar­ian, Lukashenko has been wholly reliant on President Vladimir Putin of Russia since the Kremlin helped him crush anti-government protests in Belarus in 2020.

The United States said it viewed the visit by the leader of one of Moscow's client states as another sign of China's growing ties with the Kremlin and its support for Russia's side in the conflict in Ukraine, which has grown into another major flash point between the world's two superpower­s.

“The fact that the PRC is now engaging with Lukashenko, who has, in effect, ceded his own sovereignt­y to Russia, is just another element of the PRC's deepening engagement with Russia, with all of those who are engaged with and supporting Russia's brutal war against Ukraine,” Ned Price, the State Department spokespers­on, said Monday, referring to the People's Republic of China.

Lukashenko, speaking with reporters soon after arriving in Beijing late Tuesday, said that the United States was seeking to stir anti-Chinese sentiment in Europe.

“We understand that the Americans are pushing Europe to go down the antiChines­e path,” he said in remarks broadcast on Belarusian state media. “Europe is resisting — and rightly so, because if they fence themselves off from China, and God forbid they also come into conflict with China as America is also pressing — Europe will disappear.”

The three-day visit comes a little more than a week after the United States accused Beijing of devising plans to help Russia bolster its diminishin­g stocks of weapons and ammunition. President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned China on Sunday that it would face “real costs” if it went through with the plans. Beijing has repeatedly denied that it has considered supplying Russia with lethal weapons, and has accused Washington of escalating the war by providing Ukraine with military equipment.

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