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Lukashenka, Putin: Integration ‘Temperature’ Rising

Lukashenka, Putin: Integration ‘Temperature’ Rising

They are holding negotiations, hidden from citizens and the media, in the “union state”.

Moscow and Minsk continue negotiations on the soreissues of the bilateral agenda. The main strategic issue is “ways to deepen integration,” tactical is the settlement of the situation with the supply of dirty oil. According to the announced plans, the next meeting at the level of prime ministers should take place in the coming days.

The fact that the next meeting of the Prime Ministers of Belarus and Russia Siarhei Rumas and Dmitry Medvedev can take place on June 15 in Moscow was announced last week on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. The press-center of the Belarusian government, informing about the telephone conversation of the prime ministers, stated that they had also discussed the schedule of upcoming meetings.

The main issue on the agenda is still the implementation of the treaty on the creation of a “union state”. The governments must work out proposals for deepening integration and submit them to Lukashenka and Putin before June 21. At the same time, local experts believe that if the Belarusian side could try to hush down the integration topic, as it already happened at the beginning of the 2000s, the question of compensating for losses from the supply of dirty oil will require a faster response.

Last week, Lukashenka personally went to the Naftan refinery. As he discussed the strategy for the development of the petrochemical industry there, he ordered “to protect their interests.” “No need to go crawling on your knees. We must sit down and solve it in a businesslike manner,” the Belarusian ruler told the officials. However, he did not agree with the position of the Russian side on this issue. “We have suffered the most, and they tell us: well, Belarusians - they have not lost anything. How come? Therefore, we must follow and look at why they, for example, pay someone $ 800 million of damage, and we suffered the most, but we have $ 20 million,” said Lukashenka. He explained that he took the figure of $ 800 million from the media, which report that international companies are suing this precise sum. However, Lukashenka did not report just how much Belarus asked.

At the same time, according to the information of the Belneftekhim concern, Belarus has already calculated its first losses and sent it to the Russian colleagues for consideration. “In order to discuss all aspects of compensation, a meeting of the leaders of the Belneftekhim concern and the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation with the participation of specialists from the Russian and Belarusian interested organizations is expected in the near future,” the concern’s recent report said. True, they warned that the result is not yet final.

“Due to the fact that the situation has not yet been completely completed, it is not possible to name the exact amount of damage at the present time,” they said.

However, there are other issues that may be considered by the heads of government this coming Saturday. On the sidelines of the same St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Head of the Russian Ministry of Finance Anton Siluanov said that all issues of bilateral relations are considered in a complex: in order to “understand the orbit of our financial relations,” you need to agree on how to integrate. In particular, there are two more sensitive positions for Minsk - the state loan of $ 600 million, promised by the Russian government, and the last tranche of the loan by the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development (EFSD) in the amount of $ 200 million. Belarus Finance Minister Maksim Yermalovich recently said that the country fully met the terms of the EFSD program, and that the tranche of the fund’s loan and the state loan are already included in the Belarusian budget. At the same time, while obtaining them, “problems have arisen”. According to the minister, the government is trying to borrow the missing money inside the country and is counting on the China Development Bank, with which negotiations are underway.

Alongside with this, local experts say that Belarus does not have free money to close this “hole”. Since the funds are needed to refinance the debt, then, according to the experts, the only way out for the official Minsk may be a reduction of this country's gold and currency reserves by this amount. Not so long ago, the Ministry of Finance boasted that they reached a record level of $ 8 billion since 2013. According to the government’s plans, at the end of the year there should be at least $ 7.1 billion, which is in principle doable. True, this will somewhat worsen the international position of the country.

Anton Khadasevich, Nezavisimaya Gazeta

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