Today marks Bilawal’s departure for his first trip to Russia.
The move is an attempt to refute the claims made by Imran.
ISLAMABAD: As part of Pakistan’s efforts to preserve tight ties with major nations, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is due to travel to Russia today (Sunday).
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has invited Foreign Minister Bilawal to visit Moscow from January 29 to 30, 2023, according to a statement released by the Foreign Office on Saturday.
According to the release, the foreign minister will meet informally with his Russian colleague to discuss the full range of bilateral relations and to exchange opinions on regional and global problems of shared concern.
The former prime minister Imran Khan highlighted an alleged US plot to remove him from office as one of the grounds for his desire to strengthen ties with Moscow, therefore the visit is considered as significant.
On a separate trip to Moscow, Imran visited Vladimir Putin on the day the Russian leader gave the order for his army to invade Ukraine. The former premier believed he had been penalised because of that trip and his desire to pursue a separate foreign policy.
Imran claimed that the visit to Moscow in February, when Putin was poised to invade Ukraine, had angered Washington. Russia had invaded Ukraine hours before Trump’s meeting with Putin at the Kremlin.
The ousted prime minister later asserted, citing a diplomatic cable, that the US had forewarned him that Pakistan would suffer serious consequences if a motion of no confidence was unsuccessful.
Imran further asserted that he was removed from office because he defied US demands over foreign policy.
The opposition coalition that defeated him in elections and afterwards established a coalition government consistently refuted the accusations made by the PTI chairman. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met with the Russian president separately on the margins of the SCO conference in Samarkand in September of last year to allay concerns that the current administration was supported by the US.
The action demonstrated that both sides were eager to strengthen their bilateral relations notwithstanding the change in leadership in Islamabad.
Before Imran came to power, the two former Cold War adversaries had been actively seeking reconciliation for some time. The two nations made the decision to put their painful past behind them and face the present.
India, a longtime strategic partner of Russia, had grown close to the US, so Moscow and Islamabad also tried to broaden their alternatives.
The US was allegedly behind Imran’s fall, according to the Russian media, but at a meeting with Shehbaz, Putin said he was ready to cooperate with Islamabad’s new government.
Pakistan, which is experiencing severe economic crisis, is looking into ways to acquire gas and oil from Russia at a reduced price. During the recent visit of the Russian energy minister, the two parties came to an understanding that all formalities would be finished by March before Pakistan began buying Russian oil.
