ISLAMABAD: Foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said Pakistan would not take sides between the West and Russia on the Ukraine war, as Putin's offensive in Ukraine continues, triggering the worst confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many feared nuclear war imminent.
In an interview to a Middle Eastern TV channel, the presenter said the foreign minister was “avoiding the question regarding Pakistan’s position in the international conflict” that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 24 this year.
“My position is … we are not taking sides in this conflict," the foreign minister said. “We have just gotten out of Afghanistan … literally a few months before this conflict broke out [in Ukraine], the fall of Kabul happened … We are sick and tired after 20 years of war and conflict.”
Bhutto Zardari said Pakistan had suffered a lot because of the conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan, including the loss of 80,000 Pakistani lives, including that was his mother, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who was assassination in 2007.
“All I’m saying is that what’s happening in the Ukraine right now, which the Russians have their own perspective on, the West has their own perspective,” the foreign minister said. “whichever perspective you hold, this is surely not the appropriate time to be starting another world war.”
Russia calls its invasion a "special military operation" that was necessary not only to maintain its own security but also to protect Russian-speakers from persecution.
Ukraine and the West say these are baseless pretexts for an imperial war of aggression against a neighbour that gained independence when the Moscow-led Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked a dramatic escalation of an eight-year-old conflict and was seen as a historic turning point for European security. With expanding Western aid, Ukraine has managed to frustrate many aspects of Russia’s attack, but many of its cities have been pulverized and one-quarter of its citizens are now refugees or have been displaced.
China, which Russia has sought as an ally since being cold-shouldered by the West over its invasion of Ukraine, has called the United States the "main instigator" of the crisis.
Citing NATO expansion towards Russia's borders, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the West was plotting to destroy his country, engaging in "nuclear blackmail" by allegedly discussing the potential use of nuclear weapons against Moscow, and accused the United States, the European Union and Britain of encouraging Ukraine to push military operations into Russia itself.
Analysts say Putin is betting that by increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and Russia -- a step towards World War Three -- the West will blink over its support for Ukraine, something it has shown no sign of doing so far.
Putin has repeatedly railed against the United States for driving NATO's eastward expansion, especially its courting of ex-Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Georgia which Russia regards as part of its own sphere of influence, an idea both nations reject.
