Word: russian
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...supplies. Both countries are at odds with the Kremlin over pro-Western policies. Belarus, by contrast, has been seen as Moscow's closest ally - so close, in fact, that in 1997, its President, Alexander Lukashenko, signed a pact with Russia that envisaged eventually replacing the Belarusan ruble with the Russian one and suggested a constitutional change that could allow the formal inclusion of Belarus in the Russian Federation. A decade later, both countries say they still intend to implement the agreement, but the dying days of 2006 saw their once cordial relations deteriorate into a battle of brinkmanship. Moscow warned...
...unfavorable terms" to which Belarus finally agreed include prices only 5% less than Gazprom's initial demand, and more than double that which Belarus has paid since 2005. The country was also forced to sell 50% of its national gas pipeline operator Beltransgaz to the Russian gas company. The concessions will hurt. Lukashenko has propped up the Belarusan economy with Russian fuel and once was tipped to occupy the Kremlin himself. That seemed realistic as he cozied up to an ailing Boris Yeltsin. When Vladimir Putin took Russia's helm, Lukashenko's chances were dashed, and with them, one reason...
Prosecutors appeared before the state’s highest court yesterday to appeal a judge’s decision to retry a former Harvard Russian and Slavic Studies grad student, sentenced in 2004 to six to eight years for voluntary manslaughter...
...Putin would not need to send troops to accomplish the expansion of his Russian Federation. Khalip and other observers believe that Putin is using the price hike to pressure Lukashenko to agree to make the Russian ruble the sole currency of Belarus. More importantly, Putin wants Lukashenko to stop dragging his feet on establishing the "Allied State of Russia and Belarus" - proclaimed in 1997 - and to sign the Constitutional Act in 2007 that could lead to the formal inclusion of Belarus into the Russian Federation. That would make Putin the first reunifier of the Slavic lands lost by the previous...
...merely says that the threatened cutoff is business. Market prices are for all, friend or foe. And for practical reasons, Russia may want to exert full control over Beltransgaz, Belarus' gas distribution network. The cornerstone of Lukashenko's regime has been his ability to run the economy on cheap Russian gas as well as to sell expensive products refined from cheap Russian crude oil to other customers in Europe. If Russia goes ahead with the cutoff, Belarus threatens to hijack gas designated for European customers that run in pipelines through its territory. Immediately affected would be neighbors like Poland...