A Very Weird Visit

On Lukashenka in Kyiv.

Obviously, many in Ukraine remember well the mass protests of the population of Belarus this March and the tough reaction of the local authorities to them. Therefore, on the Pecherski Hills, they could not fail to understand that the official visit of the President of the Republic of Belarus will unequivocally entail, to put it mildly, an extremely negative reaction of a significant part of the Ukrainian society.

Nevertheless, the decision to invite Aliaksandr Lukashenka to Kyiv was taken on Bankova.

Why? After all, we did not hear, for example, about the abolition of the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises West 2017, scheduled for September this year in the western regions of Russia and Belarus, which will involve about 13 thousand military men of the two countries and nearly 700 units of equipment, or about the official statement of Minsk on the condemnation of the illegal annexation and occupation of the Crimea by Russia either.

There has been no official statement of Minsk on the condemnation of the illegal annexation and occupation of the Crimea by Russia.

It appears extremely difficult to find an unequivocal answer to this question, because predictability has never been among the key features of the Ukrainian foreign policy. On the contrary, its constant fluctuations from West to East, which for a long time were covered by the so-called "multi-vector nature", led to the extremely complicated foreign policy situation in which Ukraine found itself in 2014 and remains now.

Moreover, the lack of consistency remains one of the main reasons for many failures of Ukraine's foreign policy, since few are ready to deal with a poorly predictable partner.

The lack of consistency remains one of the main reasons for many failures of Ukraine's foreign policy.

In particular, this top-ranked visit by protocol looks more than weird in view of the recent statements by the Ukrainian side regarding the desire to "return the question of the NATO Membership Action Plan to the agenda." Today's official Minsk, which is a military-political ally of Moscow, sees this organization as a threat to itself.

Are we really going to please ourselves with unjustified illusions and return the bankrupt "multi-vector nature"?

Oleg Belokolos, diplomat, expert of the Maidan of Foreign Affairs, exclusively for Gazeta.ua