In a meeting with Belarusian defence chief Viktor Khrenin a day earlier, Li highlighted China’s “fraternal” relations with Belarus as the key to the developing military cooperation between the two countries.
This is the first time a Chinese defence minister has met Lukashenko in five years – then-defence chief Wei Fenghe met the Belarusian leader in April 2018.
China and Belarus committed to deepen defence and security ties when Lukashenko met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier this year.
Li visited Moscow before his trip to Minsk, where he said China would strengthen military cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – a Eurasian economic and security group led by China and Russia. Belarus is expected to officially join the organisation by next year.In the meeting on Thursday, Lukashenko said that like China Belarus was an “absolute supporter of a multipolar world, territorial integrity and unity of the borders and territories”, SCMP noted.
“Unfortunately, the world is absolutely unstable today, through no fault of ours. Very powerful turbulent developments are happening in the world,” he said.
“I am very grateful to you for your support in military-technical and military cooperation. In this regard, we rely on our friends, first of all, the Russian Federation and China,” he said, adding that military ties with China had been developing well.