Belarusian President Lukashenko displeased by Gazprom’s gas price hike
At an awards ceremony yesterday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the situation surrounding the price of Russian gas, in which Russia’s Gazprom earns “three times as much” from supplying fuel to Belarus as to Germany, is abnormal.
Commenting on the gas price negotiations, Lukashenko accused the Russian concern of earning three times as much in Belarus as in Germany. “Is this normal? It’s abnormal,” BelTA cites the president as saying.
The parties have currently agreed to continue gas deliveries for some time on the previous terms.
On December 30, 2019, Russian and Belarusian presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko agreed over the phone that the oil and gas negotiations should be continued by the two countries’ economic entities.
Earlier in December, the Belarusian leader said that his country is the third largest consumer of Russian gas, after Germany and Italy, and that Moscow is unlikely to want to lose such a market.
Before this, Lukashenko repeatedly expressed the desire to buy Russian gas at the “Smolensk price”, with only the cost of transportation to the Belarusian border added.