In Minsk, China’s newly appointed defense minister, Li Shangfu, and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko reaffirmed their determination to deepen military cooperation.
“All our cooperation – and it is very significant – is not directed against third countries in any way. We don’t need that. We need to protect our states and our peoples,” Lukashenko said in Minsk, according to the Belarusian state news agency Belta. “The aim of my visit to Belarus is to implement important agreements at the level of heads of state and further consolidate bilateral military cooperation,” Li Shangfu said, according to the German news platform n-tv.de.
In addition, Lukashenko announced military exercises with China for 2024, underscoring Belarus’s military dependence on its “friends” Russia and China. Thousands of Russian soldiers are stationed in Belarus, and Lukashenko had made the country available as a potential deployment area for attacks on Ukraine. Kyiv considers Minsk an involved party to the conflict.
Image: Palácio do Planalto, 2019 Sessão Plenária da XI Cúpula de Líderes do BRICS – 49064604978, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image size modified)
