Kommersant: H-hour for Lukashenka is coming

Prime ministers of Russia and Belarus Vladimir Putin and Syarhei Sidorski had a meeting in Moscow yesterday. According to Kommersant daily, the enlarged negotiations showed no breakthrough.

As Andrei Kolesnikov writes in Kommersant, another visit of Syarhei Sidorski failed, as it was planned, thus making the H-hour for the Belarusian budget and Alyaksandr Lukashenka personally closer.

The joint session of the Russian and Belarusian government was held yesterday in Moscow President Hotel, as the previous one.

Belarusian press tried to detract from the importance of the visit and Sidorski himself ahead of the visit. AFN news agency gave the next heading: “Sidorski’s new raid to Moscow in search for answers to perennial questions”. “Even doing its best, the Ministry of Finance of Belarus will hardly be able to made up a proper budget 2010, which wouldn’t need urgent amendments in the first weeks of the year, if it doesn’t have answers to these questions – about gas, oil, access to the Russian market, the nuclear power plant.” what to the might-have-been meeting between minister of energy of Belarus Alyaksandr Azyarets and Gazprom head Aleksey Miller, Belarusian journalists wrote: “The Russian monopolist could have found some time for a meeting, if the Belarusian party would have been able to suggest anything more than usual bleating.”

However, the Belarusian press expected transferring to European prices of Russian gas to be postponed from 2011 till 2015 and hoped for a key role of the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the Belarusians specially rely upon: they would like to buy Russian energy at Russian domestic prices.

The Russian party didn’t feel uncomfortable in this connection. Fro example, deputy minister of energy of Russia Anatoly Yanovsky said before the talks all problems could be solved.

In general, it’s clear in what way. A Gazprom press release, spread ahead of the meeting, says “the Management Committee was entrusted to continue cooperating with federal executive authorities on transition to market-based pricing principles in the domestic gas sector from 2011.”

What to a credit tranche, Belarus would like to get from Russia, this issue was clarified as well. Speaking with journalists over this matter, Aleksey Kudrin noted “the Belarusians didn’t withdraw their request”, but reminded the money could be allocated only from EurAsEC anti-crisis fund and stated with pleasure there were no documents on the fund formation.

Vladimir Putin was more friendly than usual at the beginning of the meeting with Syarhei Sidorski (since Alyaksandr Lukashenka told Russian journalists his attitude towards the Russian prime minister Putin a near a month ago, Syarhei Sidorski is the only person for the Russian premier to discuss Belarus’s hard fate on international and inner arena).

The Russian PM stated with delight that the total turnout between Russia and Belarus had dropped by 42% in 2010.

According to Kommersant, the enlarged negotiations showed no breakthrough. Another Syarhei Sidorski’s raid to Moscow failed, thus making the H-hour closer for the Belarusian budget and Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who can’t carry the economy of Belarus on his delicate shoulders without the budget.

Presenting the final address in November, Vladimir Putin was satisfied to find the coming of “an important milestone in the history of our nations – the tenth anniversary of formation of the union state”.

“We must adequately prepare for the celebrations of this memorial date!” the Russian PM said.

Gazprom and the Ministry of Finance will apparently get appropriate instructions in the nearest time.

Or to be more precise, they got them long ago and now put them into life.