DHAKA: Bangladeshi leader Muhammad Yunus will travel to Beijing on a diplomatic goodwill visit this month as frosty relations with neighboring India spur his caretaker administration to court new friends.
The Nobel Peace laureate took charge of Bangladesh last August after the ouster of autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India after a student-led uprising.
India was the biggest benefactor of Hasina’s government and her ouster sent cross-border relations into a tailspin.
That has prompted the caretaker government helmed by Yunus to seek greater ties with Beijing, New Delhi’s chief rival for power and influence in the Asian subcontinent.
“Bangladesh aims to elevate this bilateral relationship to new heights,” Yunus’s media secretary Shafiqul Alam told reporters on Sunday in a briefing on next week’s visit.
“They will discuss a wide range of issues concerning both countries.”
Yunus is slated to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during the March 26-29 visit.
He will also receive an honorary doctorate from Peking University and meet several Chinese firms to explore investment opportunities.
“Bangladesh aspires to become a manufacturing hub and is keen to partner with China in this endeavor,” Alam said.
Diplomatic talks are also expected to touch on Bangladesh’s immense population of Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled a violent military crackdown in neighboring Myanmar in 2017.
China has acted as mediator between Bangladesh and Myanmar in the past to broker the repatriation of the persecuted minority, although efforts stalled because of Myanmar’s unwillingness to have them returned.
Interim Bangladeshi foreign minister Touhid Hossain visited China in January in what was his first official trip abroad.
China’s ambassador in Dhaka, Yao Wen, said last month that Beijing “firmly supports Bangladesh in upholding its national independence, sovereignty, and dignity.”
Bangladesh’s Yunus to visit China this month
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Bangladesh’s Yunus to visit China this month
- The Nobel Peace laureate took charge of Bangladesh last August after the ouster of premier Sheikh Hasina
- Yunus is slated to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during the March 26-29 visit
Moscow made an offer to France regarding a French citizen imprisoned in Russia, says Kremlin
- Laurent Vinatier, an adviser for Swiss-based adviser Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, Vinatier was arrested in Moscow in June 2024
- He is accused of failing to register as a “foreign agent” while collecting information about Russia’s “military and military-technical activities”
The Kremlin on Thursday said it was in contact with the French authorities over the fate of a French political scholar serving a three-year sentence in Russia and reportedly facing new charges of espionage.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia has made “an offer to the French” regarding Laurent Vinatier, arrested in Moscow last year and convicted of collecting military information, and that “the ball is now in France’s court.” He refused to provide details, citing the sensitivity of the matter.
French President Emmanuel Macron is following Vinatier’s situation closely, his office said in a statement. French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux said Thursday that all government services are fully mobilized to pay provide consular support to Vinatier and push for his liberation as soon as possible.
Peskov’s remarks come after journalist Jérôme Garro of the French TF1 TV channel asked President Vladimir Putin during his annual news conference on Dec. 19 whether Vinatier’s family could hope for a presidential pardon or his release in a prisoner exchange. Putin said he knew “nothing” about the case, but promised to look into it.
Vinatier was arrested in Moscow in June 2024. Russian authorities accused him of failing to register as a “foreign agent” while collecting information about Russia’s “military and military-technical activities” that could be used to the detriment of national security. The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
The arrest came as tensions flared between Moscow and Paris following French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments about the possibility of deploying French troops in Ukraine.
Vinatier’s lawyers asked the court to sentence him to a fine, but the judge in October 2024 handed him a three-year prison term — a sentence described as “extremely severe” by France’s Foreign Ministry, which called for the scholar’s immediate release.
Detentions on charges of spying and collecting sensitive data have become increasingly frequent in Russia and its heavily politicized legal system since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
In addition to criticizing his sentence, the French Foreign Ministry urged the abolition of Russia’s laws on foreign agents, which subject those carrying the label to additional government scrutiny and numerous restrictions. Violations can result in criminal prosecution. The ministry said the legislation “contributes to a systematic violation of fundamental freedoms in Russia, like the freedom of association, the freedom of opinion and the freedom of expression.”
Vinatier is an adviser for the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization, which said in June 2024 that it was doing “everything possible to assist” him.
While asking the judge for clemency ahead of the verdict, Vinatier pointed to his two children and his elderly parents he has to take care of.
The charges against Vinatier relate to a law that requires anyone collecting information on military issues to register with authorities as a foreign agent.
Human rights activists have criticized the law and other recent legislation as part of a Kremlin crackdown on independent media and political activists intended to stifle criticism of the war in Ukraine.
In August 2025, Russian state news agency Tass reported that Vinatier was also charged with espionage, citing court records but giving no details. Those convicted of espionage in Russia face between 10 and 20 years in prison.
Russia in recent years has arrested a number of foreigners — mainly US citizens — on various criminal charges and then released them in prisoner swaps with the United States and other Western nations. The largest exchange since the Cold War took place in August 2024, when Moscow freed journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, fellow American Paul Whelan, and Russian dissidents in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.
