Following his meeting with Vladimir Putin on the day Russia attacked Ukraine, Imran Khan accused the US of attempting to oust him by ‘instrumenting a vote of no-confidence against him.’
After he flew to Moscow on February 23 and held face-to-face conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the ousted Pakistani prime minister said his party’s MPs were ‘bribed one million dollars’ by the US to vote against him.
Mr Khan, 69, said Donald Lu, a US diplomat, indicated Pakistan would face “consequences” if he stayed in power, but “all would be forgiven” if he was ousted, during a meeting in April “that occurred before the opposition’s no-confidence motion was tabled.”
The US government has categorically denied any involvement.
The former cricketer-turned-politician claimed he had “no idea” Putin would send troops, but that he didn’t “abandon the trip” because he needed to consider what was “necessary” for “vulnerable citizens.”
Speaking to The Times, he said: “I had no idea Putin was going to send in his troops. We found out about it when we were already there. We were trying to mend fences with Russia, no Pakistani head of state had been there for years.’
He added that the military wanted to purchase Russian military hardware alongside ‘two million tonnes of grain and some heavily discounted Russian oil’.
When the invasion was annouced, Mr Khan said: ‘Should we leave, abandon the trip and go home? I might have earned some brownie points for that. But our relationship with Russia, already in a freeze, would be over. In the end we thought about our own country and what we needed for our vulnerable citizens.’
Putin had been gathering an estimated 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border before their sit-down negotiations, and he announced the independence of the Donbas and Luhansk republics, with an invasion coming soon.
Mr Khan, a former international cricketer who led Pakistan to their lone World Cup victory in 1992, previously justified his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, “How the hell was I supposed to know?” the attack would take place.
By the time Putin formally declared the invasion on February 24, forces had already penetrated the breakaway regions.
Speaking to Sky News via video link from Peshawar earlier this month, Mr Khan said: ‘I was not elected to correct all the wrongs that are going on in the world, my responsibility was my country.
‘All my relationships, whether it was with China, with the United States, with Russia, were for the benefit of our own people.
‘We didn’t realise that when I would reach there Putin would go into Ukraine. How was I supposed to know and how can you be punished for that?’
Despite his fall from power, Mr Khan believes he has enough support to become reinstated as Pakistan’s prime minister and will continue to campaign on the streets.
He added: ‘It was something I never expected, but millions of people came out into the streets protesting against this regime-change conspiracy. I’d never had so many people attending a rally.
‘It’ll work out, I’ve no doubt. No other party has ever had this level of public support. The establishment is not going to be able to stop this.’