Belarus deals a crushing blow back to Lithuania
Belarus will stop the transit of goods from Lithuania through its territory from February 7 in response to Lithuania’s ban on the transport of Belarusian potash fertilizers to its ports from February 1.
This was stated today by the press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Anatoly Glaz, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The Republic of Belarus cannot ignore this hybrid attack and is forced to take retaliatory measures. We have made a decision to ban transit transportation through our territory of petroleum products, chemical and mineral fertilizers loaded at Lithuanian railway stations from Lithuania by rail,” Glaz said.
According to his estimates, more than 1,5 million tons of such cargo are transported across Belarus, worth more than $1 billion per year.
“The direct losses of the Klaipeda port, JSC Lithuanian Railways and other participants in the Lithuanian supply chain will be calculated for a long time. But it is already clear that they amount to hundreds of millions of euros. Multimillion-dollar losses are expected from lawsuits that have already been brought against Lithuania and penalties,” Glaz noted.
He sympathized with the “long-suffering Lithuanian people,” but emphasized that Lithuania was not obliged to join the US sanctions, so the decision to stop transportation is “an initiative act of hybrid aggression aimed at harming the well-being of the Belarusian people.” A Belarusian diplomat called it “cave savagery,” adopted “at the expense of its taxpayers.”
Glaz announced further economic actions that Belarus will take together with its partners, as a result of which “Lithuania’s transit structure may go to waste.”
A representative of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the government of Belarus has developed all the necessary logistics solutions to redirect all cargo flows (not only fertilizers) to the seaports of states that are reliable partners.
Belarusian political scientist Igor Tyshkevich, who fled to Kyiv, notes that Belarusian sanctions against Lithuania will also hit Poland, since the Polish refinery supplies gasoline to Ukraine through Belarus. The closure of transit will lead to a loss of 270 million euros per year. The Belarusian Mozyr Oil Refinery, which also supplies gasoline to Ukraine, will benefit from this. He will become a monopolist. Ukraine requires 1 million cubic meters of gasoline per year.
Today it became known that India intends to purchase 1 million tons of potash fertilizers from Belarus, bypassing Western sanctions. The transaction will be done in rupees.
“If India’s deal with Belarus for the supply of a million tons of Belarusian potash fertilizers goes through, it will be a brilliant demonstration of the futility of the sanctions policy. Not only sanctions against Belarus,” political scientist Alexander Nosovich wrote in his Telegram channel.
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