Pakistan PM Imran Khan Caught In Piquant Situation In Moscow As Russia Attacks Ukraine, 

Islamabad/Moscow, Feb 24 : Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who arrived to a red carpet welcome in the Russian capital on Wednesday evening, is caught in a piquant situation after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military operations in eastern Ukraine, sharply spiking global tensions. Within a few hours of Imran Khan’s arrival in Moscow, President Putin authorised military operations in the Donbas region of Ukraine and warned the West of consequences if it intervened. The action has been condemned by the UNSC, NATO, the United States and other Western nations. Explosions have been heard around Kyiv, Kharkiv, and in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. US President Biden has held Putin responsible for bloodshed and cost to human life.

Imran Khan is set to meet President Putin today, a meeting the world will be keenly watching as Putin tries to portray that everything is normal by holding a bilateral with the Pakistani PM. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Alexeyevich Ryabkov, received Imran Khan and the Pakistani delegation at the airport on Wednesday evening, and Imran Khan was accorded a guard of honour. The Pakistan Prime Minister’s trip to Moscow to discuss issues including economic cooperation comes after a number of Western nations have slapped Russia with new sanctions over Ukraine. Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf, who is part of the entourage, has rejected the notion about the timing of the visit. “Yes there is a global tension but our visit is of bilateral nature and the similar path was taken in the visit to China where economy, economic indicators and connectivity was at the heart of that tour,” he said. Asked about Pakistan’s stance when the Ukraine crisis deepens, he said Pakistan’s message for Russia and the whole world was that it was not in any zero-sum game and there was no such [demand] from Kremlin as well. Imran Khan is slated to push for the construction of a long-delayed, multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline to be built in collaboration with Russian companies. Pakistan Energy Minister Hammad Azhar is accompanying Imran Khan on the visit to push for the gas pipeline project. The others accompanying the Pakistan PM are Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, Commerce Adviser Abdul Razak Dawood, and MNA Amir Mahmood Kiani. In an interview to RT ahead of his trip, Imran Khan had said of the gas pipeline project: “This North-South pipeline suffered, one of the reasons … was the companies we were negotiating with, turned out that US had applied sanctions on them. “So, the problem was to get a company that wasn’t sanctioned,” he said.

The project is planned to deliver imported Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from Karachi to power plants in Punjab, through a 1,100 km-long pipeline. In May last year, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov and Pakistan’s ambassador in Moscow Shafqat Ali Khan had signed an agreement to build the Pakistan Stream gas pipeline. According to the Pakistan Foreign Office, the talks between Imran Khan and President Putin will also encompass exchanges on major regional and international issues, including Islamophobia and the situation in Afghanistan. The last time an elected Pakistani prime minister visited Russia was in March 1999 when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif toured the country.

There have since been multiple informal pull-aside meetings between the Russian president and Pakistani prime minister at different global forums. According to reports, COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa was scheduled to visit Washington during the same time as PM Imran Khan’s Moscow visit. However, his visit was cancelled because US defense and military officials were reportedly pre-occupied with the crisis over Ukraine. General Bajwa apparently wanted his visit to Washington to coincide with Imran Khan’s visit to Moscow—in order to convince US defense officials that the PM’s visit was not intended to send signals of an intention to break up with the West or to support Russian involvement in Ukraine. Pakistan is keen that its newly developing relations with Moscow should not cast a dark shadow on its relations with the West. However, the Pakistani side was reportedly told by officials in Washington not to come to the American capital for this kind of diplomacy.

The US State Department reportedly conveyed to the Pakistani embassy in Washington that US defense officials are too busy because of the Ukrainian crisis and would not be able to spare time for a meeting. Washington was also said to be annoyed over the visit of Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi to Islamabad earlier this month, which could have also contributed to the cancellation of General Bajwa’s Washington visit.

With UNI Inputs