Belarus received the second half of a $1 billion loan from Russia

Belarus has received the second half of a $1 billion loan from Russia, the country's Finance Ministry said. The allocation of the second tranche of the loan was discussed at a recent meeting between Putin and Lukashenko in Sochi.

The Belarusian Ministry of Finance reported that $500 million from Russia was credited to its account - this is the second tranche from the loan, which the countries agreed on back in December 2020.

Whether there will be a third tranche that will increase the loan to Belarus to $1.5 billion is not yet clear, but the Kremlin did not deny the possibility.

Now Belarus urgently needs money - the incident with the Ryanair plane forced the European Union to discuss the introduction of sectoral sanctions against the country, and restrictions on Belarusian exports could bring down the country's economy and make it completely financially dependent on Russia, economists explained to The Bell. For example, Yaroslav Romanchuk, head of the Mizes Research Center in Minsk, says that “now Russia will allocate $5-6 billion [a year] just to keep the Belarusian economy from falling below zero.” And the academic director of the Belarusian Economic Center BEROC, Katerina Bornukova, predicts that if Russia decides to keep the economy of Belarus afloat, it will have to issue not one-time, but regular loans in amounts of $2 billion or more. We told in more detail about all the consequences for Belarus and Russia in the final newsletter here .