Russia offered to exchange oil for independence - Lukashenko

The leadership of Russia hinted at the accession of Belarus in exchange for uniform energy prices, said President of the country Alexander Lukashenko at a meeting with the team of the Svetlogorsk cellulose-cardboard plant. But, in his conviction, the peoples of both countries will not agree to this.

Photo: kremlin.ru

According to Lukashenko, the parties will continue the coordination of road maps of integration, but the creation of supranational authorities has agreed not to discuss.

Lukashenko said that in the last negotiations in Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he recalled the fact that the Belarusians created the oil industry of the USSR, and Russia received it and everything that was common to the general nuclear weapons. To Putin’s question, why Belarusia began to purchase obviously more expensive Norwegian oil, Lukashenko replied that he would continue to diversify the purchases, "so that every year on December 31, do not kneel."

• The parties still have not agreed on either the price of Russian oil to Belarus, or tariffs for its transit to Europe. The last news on this front is the beginning of the selection of technological oil from the Druzhba oil pipeline. Then this oil will have to be replenished.
• This week, Bloomberg wrote that it was the breakdown of New Year's negotiations on the political integration of Russia and Belarus that led to the version of the constitutional reform, which Putin announced on January 15.