Kuleba invites Belarus diplomat to attend Lublin Triangle meeting

After announcing the launch of the Lublin Triangle
geopolitical alliance last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba
placed a call on Aug. 1 to his Belarusian counterpart, Vladimir Makei, to
invite him as a guest of honor to its first meeting of foreign ministers. The
sides will discuss preparations for President Zelensky’s visit to Belarus and
the Third Forum of Regions of Ukraine and Belarus (to be held Oct. 8-9 in
Grodno), said the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s website. The two foreign
ministers also discussed the latest developments of Russian Wagner mercenaries
being detained in Belarus.

Kuleba announced the launch of the Lublin Triangle
alliance at a July 28 press conference in Lublin with his Polish and Lithuanian
counterparts.

Their first meeting will discuss the creation of the
LitPolUkrBrig military brigade, as well as cooperation in economics, trade and
tourism, reported the eurointegration.com.ua news site. “The Triangle will
focus on deeper cooperation between our countries, but we also see a large
prospect of it becoming an instrument of engaging those countries that need
tight contact with the West, and general European structures. And we with our
colleagues will help our friends and neighbors to cooperate more actively in
this sphere,” Kuleba said, in an indirect reference to Belarus.

Zenon Zawada: The
39-year-old Kuleba is a very ambitious foreign minister, having pursued some
innovative geopolitical strategies in the short time since his appointment in
March. Besides the Lublin Triangle project, he has also been active in trying
to improve relations with Hungary, which for three years has been vetoing NATO
decisions on integrating Ukraine and obstructing dialogue. He scored an
impressive achievement in late June, having organized the fourth meeting of the
Ukrainian-Hungary intergovernmental joint commission on economic cooperation,
which hadn’t met in seven years.

A Baltic-Black Sea geopolitical alliance – uniting the
Baltic states, Belarus, Poland and perhaps even other states – to further
challenge Russian expansionism has been a dream for Ukrainian nationalists for
as long as Ukraine has been independent. The Lublin Triangle seems to be the
first serious attempt to form such an alliance at the diplomatic level, at
least in the last decade.

The alliance is being launched specifically to aid the
Belarusian people, just as their collective political consciousness has ripened
possibly to the point where Ukraine was in 2004 as their presidential elections
approach this weekend. Its organization and activity will accelerate if a
rebellion or resistance movement develops as a result of the elections. But it
has the potential for becoming a critically important organization regardless.