Lukashenko threatens Russia with sanctions and demands loan deferment
Belarus and Russia are working to develop a solution to resolve the situation around the Belarusian nuclear power plant.
BelTA reports that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced this today at a meeting with the staff of the Svetlogorsk Central Control Commission, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“You know that the Russians were supposed to introduce the first block in 2018, and the second in 2019. But they missed the deadline, and there were huge penalties,” Lukashenko said.
According to him, during the last meeting in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed finding a mutually acceptable solution so as not to start negotiations with sanctions, and also allegedly noted that the Russian state budget is not ready for these payments.
“I say: it’s a good offer, I will have a counter offer. You missed the deadline, so let's agree that we will reduce the interest on the loan to the same level as you build in Hungary or Vietnam (somewhere around 3%). We will not impose sanctions, and this is precisely what will happen.
And if you missed the deadline, we will start paying off the loan not in two years, but in five. Logical? Logical. It’s uncomfortable, inconvenient, but we decided that in this regard we will agree: there is no other option. Either we introduce sanctions for late payments (and there’s a lot of money there), or they make progress on the loan. This is quite normal,” the agency quotes Lukashenko as saying.
At the same time, he claims that the Russian president had no rejection of this proposal.
As PolitNavigator reported, Lukashenko started making my dream come true Brzezinski.
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