Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, arrived in Russia Wednesday for a crucial meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Officials said the two sides will review bilateral ties, including energy cooperation.
Pakistan’s state-run PTV broadcast live Khan’s arrival at the airport in Moscow, where he was received by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov.
"What a time I have come; so much excitement,” the prime minister told his host, Morgulov, in brief initial remarks, apparently referring to the Russia-Ukraine standoff.
Khan is the first foreign leader to visit Moscow since Putin recognized the independence of Ukraine’s breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk earlier this week and deployed troops there. Russia’s action escalated tensions with the West and drew new international sanctions against the country.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Putin’s meeting with Khan is scheduled for Thursday. “The leaders plan to discuss the main issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as topical regional affairs, including the developments in South Asia,” Peskov said. The trip marks the first visit to Russia by a Pakistani prime minister since 1999.
Energy Minister Hammad Azhar, accompanying Khan on the visit, said that several “potential (energy) projects” the two countries have already discussed in recent months will come under discussion, among other issues, in Thursday’s meeting.
Azhar said both sides will discuss “certain outstanding issues and further clarifications regarding those projects.” He did not elaborate.
The construction of a long-delayed, multi-billion-dollar, 1,100-kilometer gas pipeline in Pakistan, in partnership with Russian companies, is among the proposed initiatives.
Moscow and Islamabad had initially agreed to launch what is known as the North-South gas pipeline in 2015 to transport imported liquified natural gas (LNG) from the southern port city of Karachi to the country’s most populous northeastern province of Punjab.
Khan, while speaking to the state-owned RT television network on Tuesday, noted that earlier sanctions on Russian companies had prevented the two countries from launching the project.
"This North-South pipeline suffered. One of the reasons... was the companies we were negotiating with... turned out that U.S. had applied sanctions on them," Khan told the network on Tuesday.” So, the problem was to get a company that wasn’t sanctioned.”
Officials in Islamabad are maintaining that the two-day trip was taking place at the invitation of President Putin and planned before the Ukraine crisis escalated.
Khan himself dismissed suggestions, while talking to Russian media, that his visit had anything to do with Moscow’s escalating tensions with Europe and the United States over Ukraine.
“This [Ukraine crisis] does not concern us. We have a bilateral relationship with Russia, and we really want to strengthen it,” Khan told RT on Tuesday.
“Now, what we want to do is not become part of any bloc. We want to have trading relations with all countries,” the Pakistani leader stressed, saying he hopes the Ukraine crisis is resolved peacefully.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to speculate on the timing of Khan’s visit to Moscow. Price told reporters in response to a question by VOA that he was not in a position to offer an assessment on the timing of a foreign leader’s travel to another country.
“We believe it's the responsibility of every responsible country around the world to voice concern, to voice objection to what Putin appears to have in mind for Ukraine,” he said.
“We've communicated to Pakistan our position regarding Russia's further renewed invasion of Ukraine, and we have briefed them on our efforts to pursue diplomacy.”
Price reiterated the U.S. has a long-standing partnership and cooperation with Pakistan.
“We certainly hope when it comes to those shared interests, the aversion of a costly conflict, the aversion of a destabilizing conflict, that every country around the world would make that point clearly in unambiguous language, in their engagements with the Russian Federation,” he said.
Critics have questioned Khan’s assertions and said his visit to Russia under the circumstances could still trouble policymakers in Western countries, where Pakistan has much bigger and long-running economic stakes.
“With developments unfolding as quickly as they are, Pakistan risks painting itself into a corner if we are to see a full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” said Elizabeth Threlkeld, the director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington.