Translated material
Nothing personal
Putin and Lukashenko spent almost half a day alone in the Kremlin
The duration of this meeting in the Kremlin apartments could be the envy of any of Vladimir Putin’s guests. On Friday, November 10, in the Representative Office, Mr. Putin talked for more than four hours with the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. Only occasionally did advisers and assistants come to them on call to give an expert assessment on a particular issue that the heads of state discussed.In the next room one could see the director of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) of Russia Andrei Belyaminov, the presidential assistant for international energy issues Igor Yusufov, and the assistant for international affairs Sergei Prikhodko. Their Belarusian colleagues were also there. Judging by all this, the presidents discussed problems that have long existed in bilateral relations.
Moscow is concerned about the volume of duty-free supplies of Russian oil to Belarus, which significantly exceed the internal needs of the neighboring country. The surplus of this oil is processed at Belarusian refineries, and the resulting oil products are sold to third countries so that customs duties go only to the Belarusian budget. The Russian treasury receives nothing from this.
The problems associated with the transition to a commercial basis between Moscow and Minsk in the gas sector are still far from being resolved. Gazprom does not intend to abandon its decision to raise the price of gas supplied to Belarus more than fourfold from January 2007, from $46.68 to $200 per thousand cubic meters. The possibility of reducing this price by creating a joint gas transportation enterprise based on Gazprom and Beltransgaz cannot be realized. For many years now, Minsk and Moscow have not been able to agree on the price of Beltransgaz; the estimates of the buyer and seller differ by almost an order of magnitude. There is just over a month left until the new year, and the likelihood of another serious gas exacerbation seems very high. Let us recall that the first happened in February 2004, when Gazprom, in response to the unauthorized withdrawal of gas carried out by Minsk, closed the valve on its export pipe running through Belarus to Europe.
The parties are also unable to reach an agreement on the sugar issue. Minsk is not very honestly using the customs benefits provided by its Russian neighbor for the supply of sugar made from sugar beets. Under the guise of beet sugar, Belarus supplies sugar made from sugar cane purchased abroad, to which customs benefits do not apply. According to Vremya Novostey, the head of the Federal Customs Service, Mr. Belyaminov, provided information to the presidents about the results of examinations of Belarusian sugar regarding its origin.
At the beginning of the conversation with Vladimir Putin, still in the presence of the press, Mr. Lukashenko was quite nervous. The end of the protocol part of his opening speech was so indistinct, if not incoherent, that even experienced journalists from news agencies could not isolate anything worthy of a news feed from the words of the Belarusian president. And Alexander Lukashenko spoke about some problems that were very “important”, in his opinion, for “subjects of the federation”. “We must solve them,” the Belarusian president convinced the Kremlin owner. This was said in such a way that it seemed as if the problems of these “subjects” - presumably the Russian Federation - were of more concern to the guest than to the host of the meeting.
Perhaps such concern was inspired by Mr. Lukashenko's meeting with the governor of the Stavropol Territory, Alexander Chernogorov, whom he received in Minsk on the eve of his arrival in Moscow. Even then, the Belarusian leader said that he was preparing for the meeting “thoroughly... in order to present to his colleague what has been done and what has not been done.”
As for the Russian president, he was preparing for the meeting with his partner in the union state, obviously no less seriously. A few months ago, during a night meeting with journalists in Shanghai, Vladimir Putin told a Vremya Novostey correspondent how he does this. Putin was asked whether it would be psychologically difficult to start a conversation with Alexander Lukashenko (Putin was scheduled to travel to Minsk in a few days) after almost personal attacks on the Russian president. “A person in my place,” Mr. Putin replied, “has no right to be guided by emotions, I have a goal that needs to be achieved, and I must forget about grievances here.”
Whether the Russian president has made progress towards achieving his goal this time remains unknown. This can be indirectly judged by the level of emotions that will characterize Mr. Lukashenko’s upcoming speeches on the topic of “processes taking place in the union state,” as he put it the other day in a conversation with the governor of Stavropol.