Belarus (11) -- Analyses -- 2010

More about the crisis

24.06.2010

Belarus stopped paying its gas bill on Monday in protest, it says, for Russia not paying $260 million US worth of transit fees for transporting Russian gas to other parts of Eastern Europe through Belarus pipelines. Lithuania gets all of its Russian gas via Belarus, and the country reported receiving only 60 per cent of its normal supplies on Wednesday after Belarus began hoarding gas intended for export. The European Union's energy chief Guenther Oettinger urged both sides Wednesday not to use other nations as pawns in their dispute. Oettinger described reducing supplies to Lithuania as "an attack against the whole European Union." "We have an expectation that this crisis and this politics between Russia and Belarus should not come to Europe," he said. "We expect that contracts are contracts." Russia says Belarus is demanding subsidies in excess of what has been agreed to in earlier contracts. Russia exports about 80 per cent of its gas bound for Europe via Ukraine, with the remainder passing through Belarus.

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