Aliaksandr Lukashenka said that Ukraine is going to refuse to buy Belarusian fertilizers. According to him, they will be replaced with American products. He said this while receiving retired Ukrainian politician Aleksandr Moroz. Lukashenka believes that the actions of the Ukrainian authorities cannot be analyzed.
«What your authorities are doing against Belarus is beyond analysis, beyond reason,» he said.
According to his press service, Lukashenka added that Ukraine had decided to give up Belarusian potash fertilizers, deciding to replace them with American potash, but the U.S. refused, since they themselves buy potash in Canada.
«You have to appeal to America to buy it! And just imagine what the price is: to extract, process, transport by rail, load it in the ports, then bring it thousands of kilometers away, then again transship it, then rail again, until it gets to the peasants… It will be a lot more expensive. Why are you doing it under such a situation?» Lukashenka said.
He continued that he was ready to lend Ukraine his shoulder at any time, for example, by supplying electricity, including as part of an agreement on emergency aid. Lukashenka also lodged a complaint about the closure of Ukrainian skies to Belarusian planes, calling the Ukrainian leadership brainless.
«Why did they close the sky ahead of the entire planet for our planes to fly over? Well, we’ll fly around. And if we reach an agreement with Russia and Russia closes flights from Ukraine – both Ukrainian and others? And put the entry points to Russia through Belarus, what will they do? You know, it’s brainlessness. Okay, the Lithuanians: the Lithuanian authorities have no brains for a long time. But why is Ukraine doing this? Why was it necessary to destroy everything?» Lukashenka was offended.
He went on to say that he had worked hard to organize a dialogue between Ukraine and Russia.
«We agreed on a lot of things. And Poroshenko agreed. But then the command «No!» followed from across the ocean, and he withdrew from these matters. There would already be no war in Donbass. Putin promised money to rebuild Donbass. People would have lived peacefully. No. What kind of politics is that?» he said.
Moroz was quick to concur with Lukashenka, saying that it was not the country’s policy, but the execution of someone else’s policy.
«This is what I’m talking about» Lukashenka said.
It should be noted that no one in Ukraine has made official statements about the rejection of Belarusian potash. However, in December, when imposing sanctions against Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) and some other companies, the U.S. included Agrorozkvit, a Ukrainian subsidiary of BPC, into the sanctions list. The company is a distributor of domestic potash in Ukraine. On February 1, Lithuanian Railways terminated the contract for transit of fertilizers with Belaruskali. Earlier the Lithuanian government had recognized it as inconsistent with the requirements of national security. Aliaksandr Lukashenka acknowledged the problems with the transportation of potash in an interview with Vladimir Solovyov. At the same time, he said that there was allegedly an agreement to transport potash to Ukrainian ports.
«Well, you know, there’s a problem now with Belarusian potash, and not because it’s potash, but because it’s 11-12 million tons – it’s a huge mass that has to be moved. So this is the problem. The Ukrainians offered, we agreed. Today they kind of said no, we won’t load… I mean they were stopped too,» Lukashenka told the Russian host earlier this month.
Source: Reform.by
