Kuchma calls Lukashenka servant of two masters

Aliaksandr Lukashenka is a strong player today, but not independent. This is how former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma described him in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Answering the question about the current Belarusian-Ukrainian relations, the politician said: "I think that the Ukrainian leadership has chosen the current model of relations with Belarus very correctly. Despite the fact where this war started from and how Russia constantly uses the Belarusian territory. Everybody understands everything. Everyone sees everything. No one has forgotten anything. But both sides pretend to faithfully observe the armed neutrality. And at the moment it's the right choice".

He mentioned that Belarusians and Ukrainians have a long common history: they were together in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And Belarus has never given Ukraine any reason to consider it a potential enemy.

Speaking of Lukashenka, the Ukrainian ex-president characterized him as a servant of two masters, maneuvering between the masters: "Putin needs Lukashenka. Belarus is strategically invaluable to Putin - both for the war against us and for the potentially inevitable confrontation with the West. Lukashenka now effectively controls his country, which Putin himself would lack the resources to do. So I would say that Lukashenka is not an independent actor today, but a strong one. The paradox is that Lukashenka is not independent in two ways - he depends on China as well, not only on Russia. He is a servant of two masters. But this gives him room to maneuver, and he occasionally takes advantage of the clash of interests and contradictions between Beijing and Moscow".

Leonid Kuchma was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005. For a time after 2014, he was a member of the Trilateral Contact Group, which negotiated the situation in the Donbas in Minsk. Kuchma represented Ukraine in this group.