Lukashenka Wants to Regain the Trust of the West :: Charter'97 :: News

Belarus would like to improve its relations with the West after deterioration in relations with Russia, which had offered “market relations”. However, Belarus is indisposed to change of its political system, which had been defined as a condition for partnership demanded by Europe, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said in an interview to Reuters. The Belarusian ruler believes political demands of the West leading to his dismissal in the long run are inappropriate, however he would try to show himself as a reliable partner for many years, considering his intention to run for the forth term.

“I admit, a mistake and disadvantage of our foreign policy was its being single-vector, and directed towards Russia. And in fact we have lost the West,” Lukashenka said.

“We were standing on one leg, and we should stand on two legs. We are between the West and Russia. We are the bridge between Russia and the West,” he added.

Lukashenka has accused Russia of imperial ambitions

Lukashenka has accused the Russian Federation of imperial ambitions. Russia is ready to cooperate with Minsk only as with a junior partner.

Since 2007 Moscow doubled gas price for Belarus and introduced a tax on oil deliveries. The Kremlin denies that oil and gas prices are used as levers of political pressure.

“Without any reasons the Russian Federation has already included itself to the leading centres of power in the world. Russian interests are present in almost every spot around the world,” Lukashenka believes.

“It seems that only Russian interests are present in Belarus, Ukraine or Georgia, and Belarusian interests inside Belarus are out of the question. Russian policy is more and more like U.S. policy, which they never cease to criticize," he said. "There is some imperial style in their behavior." He offered Russia to give up its “superpower-ness” and “attempts to look down on us as on a younger brother”.

Belarusian economy sustains losses

Russian president Vladimir Putin promised Minsk a gradual transition to market economy with retaining certain subsidies, but Lukashenka says that Belarusian economy sustains losses of up to $5 billion a year, or one tenth of the GDP.

However Minsk hopes to compensate them, in return offering Moscow a market model.

“President Putin has said that Russia wants market relations with all countries. Following this principle, we would offer Russia to pay for all services provided by Belarus for free,” Lukashenka said meaning oil and gas transit fees, goods transit, and compensation of expenses in military cooperation.

“Russia pays $4.5 billion for gas transit to Poland, and we get only $300 million. Only gas could compensate all our losses, if we take Polish variant,” the Belarusian leader said.

He is sure that he is able to offset negative effects of oil and gas price hike, preventing economic slump and deterioration of living standards in Belarus, where a considerable party of population is used to stable subsidies of the state.

“We shall endure this situation economically. But the most hurtful thing for us is that such barbaric actions have been taken by our ally, the closest country for us,” Lukashenka said.

He repeated that he hopes to find sources of oil outside Russia, repurposing Belarusian oil refineries for deliveries from the West or Middle East.

“I think we would find willing companies to deliver oil to Belarus, with which we could privatize our enterprises. There are companies which would come to our enterprises with their own oil,” Lukashenka said.

Line of policy remains the same

The European Union has offered a considerable economic support to Belarus on condition that the regime would agree for holding free elections, releasing political prisoners and allowing freedom of expression.

Lukashenka rebuffed such a possibility.

“All demands to Belarus eventually amount to our destroying our political system and secondly, in all cases it had been implied that the president is illegitimate and must vacate his position. What right does the West have to demand that?” he said.

Lukashenka has underlined that in any case Europe which is concerned by guarantees of energy resources deliveries from Russia, would have to deal with a transit state, Belarus.

“Europe has realized that it is impossible to guarantee energy security without Belarus, and that Belarus wants to maintain its sovereignty. And it was a surprise for Europe,” he said.