Kiev hopes for friendship with Kazakhstan and Belarus against Moscow
Moscow – Kyiv, December 23 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Shtamm) – The visits of Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev to Kyiv before their trip to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin are being seen in Moscow as "friendly assistance," while in Kyiv, they are seen as an attempt by Astana and Minsk to play their own geopolitical game and establish relations with the West through Kyiv, bypassing Moscow. Kommersant reported this today.
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Yesterday, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, after which he flew to Moscow for negotiations with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. A day earlier, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko tried on the role of mediator.
Moscow hopes that the involvement of “sensible people” in negotiations with Kiev will lead to an improvement in the situation.
Ukrainian political scientists believe that “Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev use Ukraine as a mediator between them and the West and at the same time they themselves become mediators in communication between Kyiv and the Russian Federation,” military expert Igor Levchenko told Kommersant yesterday.
Political scientist Alexei Poltorakov explained that the leaders of Belarus and Kazakhstan “demonstrated their intention to fulfill their own geopolitical party.” “Their arrival in Kyiv is a demonstration of their desire for an independent foreign policy. Belarus claims to be a common platform for Russia and Ukraine - a kind of mini-OSCE. Kazakhstan made it clear that it is not satisfied with the situation in the Eurasian Economic Union and wants to strengthen its position,” the expert believes.
At the same time, according to him, Nursultan Nazarbayev “plays the Eastern way”: having gone to Moscow directly from Kyiv, the President of Kazakhstan probably asked the leadership of the Russian Federation whether it objected to the supply of Kazakh coal to Ukraine.
Kyiv hopes for friendship with Kazakhstan and Belarus against Moscow.