Belarus leader and Russian ally Lukashenko to visit China

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins the Live show to discuss reports that Belarus leader Lukashenko will visit China.

Video Transcript

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- The President of Belarus set to visit China tomorrow in the hopes of helping China engineer a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. This even as Beijing continues to consider lethal arms sales to Russia. Here with the latest, we've got Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman. Rick, what do we know about this so far?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, China invited the Belarusian President Lukashenko to Beijing. He'll be there for three days this week. And it's not the most welcomed development from Ukraine's perspective. There have been reports circulated by the United States that China may be considering giving military aid to Russia to help with its war, I think. Drones, for example, lethal drones.

Lukashenko, the Belarusian President, a close ally of Vladimir Putin. So he could be going as a Putin envoy to discuss possible aid to Russia to help them fight this war. Now China in the last couple of weeks has gotten more involved in this. They floated a so-called peace plan. They're trying to assert some influence here. Washington is not thrilled about this. The United States, basically, is saying, China is not relevant to this conflict, we just want them to stay on the sidelines.

But the most important thing to watch for here is whether China would begin to help Russia more than it is already doing. It has been buying Russian energy supplies, but not really providing any kind of material Russia could use in the war. If China were to do that, that would be a big move that would be real worrisome for markets because the United States and Europe would probably respond to that with some kinds of sanctions on China. So important point to watch.

- Rick, while we have you, Saudi Arabia has signed an agreement for Ukraine aid. Interesting move here. What is the latest there?

RICK NEWMAN: It is an interesting move. Now this is humanitarian aid. Saudi Arabia has said it's going to offer Ukraine $400 million of aid. That is not bombs and weapons. That is humanitarian aid. About 75% of that will be oil products. But this is an interesting twist because Saudi Arabia, in ways, is an ally of Russia.

They are both members of the OPEC plus oil producing cartel, and they communicate and they act in conjunction with each other to some extent with regard to oil production. So Saudi Arabia kind of demonstrating it wants to earn some points for being a good Global Citizen and helping out Ukraine. So Washington has said, hey, the more aid for Ukraine, the better, and they are happy with Saudi Arabia stepping up here.

- All right. Keeping tabs on all of this for us, Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman. Thanks, Rick.