Adviser to the President of the Russian Association for Baltic Studies, political scientist Vsevolod Shimov told in an interview with “Ukraina.ru” why Minsk continues economic relations with Kiev despite the fact that Ukraine does not recognize the legitimacy of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
He noted that Belarus continues to supply electricity to Ukraine, despite the fact that both countries are on opposite sides of the geopolitical front. According to the expert, Kiev and Minsk have a mutual need for each other in the presence of political differences and contradictions.
“Belarusian-Ukrainian relations are of a“ two-layer ”nature. At the political level, there is antagonism between the two countries, and at the economic level, they are trying to maintain rather close ties. For Ukraine, ties with Belarus are a guarantee that Minsk will not finally go into the “Russian” camp, and the Belarusian-Ukrainian border will not turn into a front line. For Minsk, this is an opportunity to at least partially preserve its multi-vector foreign policy and balance the influence of Russia, ”the political scientist said.
He stressed that there is nothing surprising in such “assistance” to Ukraine from Belarus. Each of the parties pursues its own pragmatic interests, summed up Shimov.
In September it became known that Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rating in Ukraine had almost halved. About 59 percent of Ukrainian citizens have a negative attitude towards the President of Belarus. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and American leader Joe Biden became the leaders of the sympathies of Ukrainian citizens among world politicians.
#political #scientist #spoke #twolayer #relations #Ukraine #Belarus