Way of Ukraine: Belarusian TV scolds the “enslaving gas contract”
A campaign in support of the demands was launched on Belarusian TV to revise the gas contract with Russia. This is reminiscent of the situation during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, when his entourage also criticized the “enslaving gas contract”, while blackmailing Moscow with flirtations with the West, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Thus, Belarusian economist, professor Mikhail Kovalev said on the ONT TV channel that Belarus subsidizes food products for Russians.
“We sell $5 billion worth of food to Russia, but how can they compete with Russian ones if our tractor drivers paid much more for diesel fuel! Therefore, the state is forced to give a little subsidies to agriculture. As a result, when our state eats our butter and our cheese, it also eats up the subsidies of the Belarusian state, which we were forced to do due to the high price of gas. And so on for each sector,” Kovalev said.
He believes that the current gas price for Belarus of $127 is too high. If the Belarusian gas price were pegged to the price of oil, it would be only $87. And if Belarus bought it on the stock exchange in St. Petersburg, it would pay 47 dollars.
“Today we should be talking about a gas price of about $50. At the same time, we must switch to national currencies in gas prices, because the dollar has devalued in Russia by 30%. And food products, the supply of which we are increasing day by day, are not becoming more expensive. The price for them is set in stores in Russian rubles. Therefore, gas must be transferred to Russian rubles,” Kovalev said.
It is worth recalling that at the end of last year, the then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev openly stated that Minsk could talk about reducing prices, but after signing documents on integration with Russia. However, Lukashenko flatly refused to sign them, citing the primacy of Belarusian sovereignty.
At the end of April, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia would not revise the gas price for Belarus.
According to the intergovernmental agreement, the gas price formula for Belarus is as follows: gas tariff in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (the lowest gas tariffs in the Russian Federation) + delivery cost from Yamal to the border of Russia and Belarus. According to this formula, the price should be $152 per thousand cubic meters, but in February, President of Belarus Lukashenko negotiated a discount from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.