Pitchfork For Lukashenka
- Iryna Khalip, Novaya Gazeta
- 6.03.2020, 8:59
The oil sessions of the dictator are more and more reminiscent of the old movie about Chapaev.
Government meetings in Minsk with the participation of Aliaksandr Lukashenka strongly remind frames from an old movie, where Chapaev, using potatoes, explains where the commander should be during the battle. So in Minsk everyone is leaning over the potatoes, which Aliaksandr Lukashenka is moving around the world map with the words “they promised us oil here. And here. And we can also try there.”
On Tuesday, another oil meeting was held, devoted to the search for oil sources. Aliaksandr Lukashenka said that, because of the countries that are used to resolving any issues with the help of an oil pipe valve, Belarus has been under-receiving a million tons of oil every month since January. He said that not only the country getting hold of the valve is to blame, but Belarus, too: we relaxed, trusted them, did not diversify supplies, relied on the decency of the partner - and here you have a sad, but not at all hopeless result. Because now the whole world is ready to help the besieged Belarus, and deliver oil even through pipelines, even by rail, even by sea.
Apart from oil, said Aliaksandr Lukashenka, alternative logistics is extremely important. So that - this did not sound out loud, but was in the air - the partner was not tempted to grab the valve and cut off supplies until complete and final integration.
Options are the ports of Lithuania and Latvia and the Odesa-Brody oil pipeline. Thus, according to Lukashenka, Belarus will buy from Russia about 40 percent of the required volume, and the rest from other countries, from which there are many proposals. He recalled the recent visit of Mike Pompeo to Minsk: “I spoke with the Secretary of State on this subject - to help us with the infrastructure and oil supplies. Pompeo himself offered this oil at competitive prices. And at the Munich conference there was a statement: they allocated a billion dollars for the construction of logistics facilities, that is, for the supply of oil. In particular, we can expect that we will receive from them very cheap loans for the construction of the same paltry pipe from the Baltic. We need a couple of connecting strips someplace, which the government expects to build for as much as three years. This will not happen. One and a half to two years, no more! And we ourselves will find 100-120 million dollars for these connecting strips.”
In the meantime, the “paltry pipe from the Baltic” has not been built, the Belarusian oil refineries operate with minimal load. However, Aliaksandr Lukashenka does not blame in this either Vladimir Putin personally or Russia, which “resolves issues with the help of a valve”, but unscrupulous ministers who, it turns out, do not fulfill the instructions of the rulers. At the end of last week, during a meeting with the chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission’s board Mikhail Myasnikovich, he complained: “We didn’t have time to agree with Putin that they would pay us premiums or something — it’s their business — to compensate for the reduction of this duty (if, for example , we received a billion dollars from duty last year, and today 700 million, then Russia compensates 300 million), in the evening the ministers already interpret our agreements in their own way. I take the record of the conversation: clearly, in black and white: there was an agreement that the difference would be compensated to us. That is, financially, we will remain at the level of last year. This is not happening. What kind of union is this? ”
This is a tax maneuver in the Russian oil sector. Russia is gradually reducing export duties on oil, while increasing the tax on mining. Belarus, unlike other states, earned on non-payment of the export duties when buying Russian oil, but it received export duties to the budget when selling oil products from processed Russian raw materials. So, Belarus has been demanding compensation for losses due to the tax maneuver for the second year already.
Vladimir Putin has never said in public space that Russia will be compensating for Belarusian losses.
The assurances that the parties have agreed and Russia will pay Belarus $ 300 million a year, sound exclusively from Belarusian officials and Lukashenka himself. He spoke about this for the last time on February 21 after a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin. “He said: we are compensating 300 million dollars. Including through premiums to companies,” Aliaksandr Lukashenka quoted his interlocutor. The interlocutor, meanwhile, was silent, and only a week later, Mr. Lukashenka complained to the chairman of the EAEC board that the Russian ministers interpret everything differently and distort Putin. He explained that Russia enjoys the “right of power - to coerce, to force.”
He is also dissatisfied with the gas supply contract signed in February. This year, for the first time, it was not signed on the eve of January 1. But still, the parties agreed and signed the contract before the end of the year. Russia will supply gas to Belarus at last year’s price - $ 127 per thousand cubic meters - although Belarus insisted on lowering the price to the level of the Smolensk region. At a press conference last December, Vladimir Putin said that the farther from the production sites, the more state subsidy for the Russian regions. Smolensk region is the most subsidized. Putin said that with a reduction in prices for Belarus, it turns out that Russia subsidizes the economy of another country. At the same time, he did not exclude this possibility. But for this, he said, “general laws, common supranational control and issuing bodies, and general rules in the field of antitrust policy” are needed.
Two months after that press conference, Belarus nevertheless signed a contract with Gazprom. Aliaksandr Lukashenka took this as an act of violence: “They tell us: $ 127 per thousand cubic meters is good. Do you know for how much Poland receives the American gas today, which must be turned into a liquid state, brought here, regasified and delivered through a pipe? 90 dollars! We say to the Russians (as they suggested): let's do it like last year. Last year, taking into account the customs clearance of oil, it was 110–111. “No, let it be 127.” Today, gas is already being traded on the stock exchange below $ 100. Is that normal? Is this some sort of coercion to integrate?”
Well, yes, it’s exactly what it is. I would even say a chemically pure coercion to integration. And the matter is not only in the hints of Vladimir Putin that the subsidy must be earned by integration. Remember the recent statements by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak that instead of compensating for the tax maneuver, Russia may provide the Belarusian oil refineries with a negative excise tax deduction, which is valid for Russian refineries. But for this it is necessary to unify tax legislation. Here you have one of the roadmaps, which for some reason everyone has recently forgotten about. In other words, everything that Belarus inherited last year for friendship and promises, now requires moving forward, and the end point of that route is well known. Vladimir Putin is keeping silent not in vain. Vice-premiers and heads of state corporations, a spokesman and ministers, lower-ranking officials and experts speak for him. But Putin has no reason to speak - he said everything before. Now he can limit himself to the remarks about porridge on the water.
At the same time, the coercion to integration which Aliaksandr Lukashenka is speaking about goes without the “green men” or other dangerous paraphernalia. So, there is a choice: either pay for oil and gas as much as the seller requires, or agree to the proposed conditions and fill in local oil refineries with cheap oil up to the roof. It’s just, both options are disadvantageous for Lukashenka now.
On the one hand, he understands perfectly well that Belarusians want to live in an independent state (even the pensioners have not believed in the myth “Putin will come and we will have pensions like in Russia”), and now, before his seventh term, which has long been pictured by the CEC, he is trying to look like a guarantor of independence. Moreover, Aliaksandr Lukashenka clearly understands: if something happens - integration, anschluss, unification - he is unlikely to be useful to Russia. On the other hand, before this very seventh term, publicly recognizing that the notorious economic stability has been bloated all these years, like the MMM, and now everything will collapse and there will be no money to increase salaries and pensions before the elections is also a defeat. That is, the situation is best characterized by the simple word “pitchfork”. And to predict how the next round of negotiations will end, which road maps will fly from the sleeves, is pointless. Pitchfork, unlike a rake, is an unpredictable tool.
However, cornered Lukashenka apparently does not exclude negotiations when he finally receives, not an economic, but a political proposal. Both for himself and his family. Well, he does remind Rutskoy!
Iryna Khalip, Novaya Gazeta