According to Russia, the US is ‘punishing’ Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for his visit to Moscow

*Paromita Das

Pakistan’s political turmoil has become the new flashpoint in global politics, with Russia alleging that the US is “punishing” Prime Minister Imran Khan for visiting Moscow earlier this year, when the invasion of Ukraine was imminent.

During a press conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the US of meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
“Immediately after the announcement of Imran Khan’s working visit to Moscow on February 23-24 this year, the Americans and their Western associates began to exert rude pressure on the Prime Minister, demanding an ultimatum to cancel the trip,” Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told news agency PTI.

“This is yet another shameless attempt by the US to meddle in the internal affairs of an independent state for its own selfish purposes.” “The above facts eloquently testify to this,” Zakharova said, accusing Washington of meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
On February 25, the day Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Khan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. He became Pakistan’s second prime minister to visit Russia in the last 23 years, following Nawaz Sharif in April 1999.

Russia was responding to Khan’s earlier claims that a US diplomat, Donald Lu, is part of a “foreign conspiracy” to destabilise his government through a no-confidence motion introduced in Parliament by opposition parties.
Khan claimed that Lu warned Pakistan’s envoy to the US, Asad Majeed, that there would be “implications” if Pakistan’s prime minister survived the National Assembly no-trust vote.

He stated that minutes of a meeting between Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States and US officials were shared at the meeting of the National Security Committee, the country’s highest security body.

The US, on the other hand, has refuted these “baseless allegations” about Washington’s role in the so-called “foreign conspiracy.”

“As you heard from me last week, we support the peaceful upholding of constitutional and democratic principles in Pakistan,” State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said at his daily news conference on Tuesday.