Word: belarus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...while since Russia pulled out the "sanitary regulations" card to ban imports over a spat with one of its neighbors. But on June 6, after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko publicly voiced his fury at Russia's raising of energy prices, Russia imposed a ban on dairy products from Belarus, sparking a so-called milk war that has seen tensions between the former allies escalate daily...
...Over the past year, Lukashenko has been increasingly turning his back on Russia, slowly allying his country with the West. So far, the move seems to be paying off. Belarus was included in the E.U.'s Eastern Partnership initiative, created last year to strengthen economic and political ties between Europe and six former Soviet states. Lukashenko's travel ban to Europe - issued after his 2006 re-election, which the U.S. and the E.U. maintain was rigged - has been lifted. And Belarus secured an additional $1 billion on a $2.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after Russia canceled...
...Lukashenko's refusal to attend a key security summit in Moscow on Monday because of the dairy ban has infuriated the Kremlin, and despite Belarus' achievements with the E.U., the price for angering Russian President Dmitri Medvedev may just be too high. "Exporting food to Russia has been one of [Belarus'] most important and reliable trade sectors," Andrew Wilson, a senior policy fellow at the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations, tells TIME. "The ban will definitely sting." In 2008, Russia bought 93% of Belarus' meat and dairy products, earning Belarus $1 billion...
...Russia has insisted that the ban is not political and simply reflects a failure on Belarus' part to meet new sanitary regulations. But Russia has a tradition of banning goods from neighboring countries at the first sign of disagreement, like the 2005 ban (which has since been lifted) of Polish meat after Poland joined the E.U. and the 2006 ban of Georgian wine after Tblisi accused Moscow of spying, leading some observers to suggest that Belarus isn't being paranoid. "That's the Russia way," says Wilson. "It has had a lot of economic rows with neighbors, and it uses...
...economic relationship between Russia and Belarus has been steadily worsening since 2007, when Russia raised gas prices and demanded that Belarus give up control of gas transit from Russia to Europe - about 20% of Russian gas exports to Europe go through Belarus, and so Russia wants to take over Beltransgaz, the state-run operator of Belarus' gas-pipeline network. (Read "Russia's Gazprom Diplomacy: Turning Off Europe's Heat...