Gas row between Moscow, Minsk down to politics
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Russia has lost patience in dealing with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and the latest gas spat between Russian gas giant Gazprom and Minsk was just a reflection of the friction, a Moscow-based senior analyst said Tuesday.
The row between Moscow and Minsk started a few weeks ago when Gazprom asked its Belarusian counterpart Beltransgaz to pay its arrears for 2010, which amounted to some 200 million U.S. dollars. The brawl climaxed Tuesday when Gazprom cut the blue fuel supply to Belarus by 30 percent of regular daily volume.
According to Lukashenko, it was Gazprom who owed Minsk, not vice versa.
"This is a purely political spat and it is likely steaming out of the Minsk obduracy in the Customs Union negotiations," Valery Piven, an expert in foreign markets, said in an interview with Xinhua.
"Otherwise, it is hard to explain the coincidence between the current brawls and the stubborn Belarusian approach to some of the Customs treaty clauses," he said.
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan formed the Customs Union, which should officially come into force on July 1.
"Friendly relations between Moscow and Minsk have always been built on the basis of unwritten rules of the game," Piven said.
"Minsk follows Russia's lead in politics. Russia, in turn, subsidizes the Belarusian economy, which is heavily oriented to the Russian market. If Minsk ended playing according to these rules, what was the sense for Moscow to keep its support for the naughty neighbor?"
Minsk kept sending contradictory messages on Tuesday regarding its gas row with Russia.
Belarus has found money and would pay for Russian gas "soon," Lukashenko said on Tuesday, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
A few minutes later, Russian and Belarusian media reported that Lukashenko said "the gas dispute snowballed into a gas war."
One day earlier, when Lukashenko offered to pay back the due debt in machinery, equipment and other goods, his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the idea with scorn, saying Gazprom could not receive payment in "pies, butter, cheese or other means of payment."
Apparently offended, Lukashenko on Tuesday said, "We take it as an insult when we are lowered to the level of chops, sausages, butter and pancakes."
"There is nothing unusual in this strong wording the two leaders have exchanged," Piven said. "When political arguments come to an end, Russia customarily uses her 'gas stick'."
"Lukashenko makes contradictory statements because he wants to be good for everybody - for his countrymen, for Russia, for the West. He is like a casino gambler who places his bets on both red and black. Russia demonstrated it had no desire to have Lukashenko as her stickman," Piven said.
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