Does Medvedev go to Belarus?
25
8:40, — Politics
Yesterday Dmitry Medvedev has stated that his first foreign visit in the position of Russian president will be in one of the CIS countries. Most likely it will be Belarus, Russian mass media note.
“We have noted many times that relation with the CIS countries are the main foreign policy priority for Russia,” he said, apparently meaning “we with Vladimir Putin”. However, the successor will have to mend these relations in the situation of ruthless competition.
“The relations with the West have been fundamentally damaged, and a pause should be made there, while Russia should become a center of gravity for its neighbours,” told a political analyst Dzmitry Oreshkin in an interview to RBK daily. “But traditions of administrative and power control does not work in the 21st century, a “soft power” is needed. It is no coincidence that over the last month Moscow has replaced feet-tromping by calm communications and expansion of capitals”.
However, relations of the Russian Federation with its neighbours are hardly better than with the West, and directly depend on them in the case of Ukraine and Georgia. Besides, Moscow does not hide gas truncheon. On March 3 Gazprom announced gas deliveries to Ukraine would be reduced because of a debt. Judging by Medvedev’s visit to the Balkans, gas remains the main instrument of the Kremlin’s foreign policy. But that doesn’t mean that elated by successful talks on Southern Stream, the successor would fly to Kyiv and develop the success. The office of the Ukrainian President does not expect a visit. On Wednesday Viktor Yushchenko goes to Kazakhstan, to alternative sources of oil and investment.
Dmitry Medvedev is not expected in Kazakhstan as well. “We haven’t heard about that,” RBK Daily was told by a source in the Foreign Ministry of the country. Local experts also say that this visit is rather desirable. “Kazakhstan has imposed quotas on sugar import recently, which caused Moscow’s dissatisfaction. Russia imposes quotas as well, and these problems are to be solved,” the RBK Daily was told by Kazakh group of risks evaluation director Dosym Satpayev. “It is worthwhile to establish personal relations with Nazarbayev for Medvedev, too”.
And everybody is waiting for Russian president in Belarus. And it looks like Medvedev’s foreign policy debut would take place in Minsk. At least, the government of the country and the staff of the “union state” do not deny that. “We have good reasons to believe it will be Belarus,” the press secretary of the “union state” Ivan Makushok told to the RBK Daily. “We have multilane integration, this year Putin has introduced Medvedev and Lukashenka to each other in Krasnaya Polyana, where they were skiing, and it was their first meeting. They talked for a long time”.
However, Yuliya Tymoshenko’s visit to Minsk could be in advance of Medvedev’s. On February 29 Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchinov and Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhei Sidorski agreed upon her visit. Belarus plans to place a project request for its first nuclear power plant with Ukraine. They have also discussed purchase of nuclear fuels and burial of waste in Chernobyl zone. The project of deliveries of Ukrainian electric power via Belarus to Lithuania and alternative deliveries of oil to Mozyr oil refinery via Ukraine were discussed.
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