For those of you following the ongoing Russian/Belarusian feud, there's a lot more information (collected in several stories) over at the Radio Free Europe web site. However, let me give you a quick update here.Belarus, still smarting from Russia's decision to require a new duty of $180 per ton of Russian crude oil exported to Belarus, has dared to stir the Red Bear by imposing a "transit fee" of $45 per ton on Russian crude oil shipped through Belarus's oil pipelines to Europe. And that's not all. Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenka (shown at left) has said he will demand still more payments from Russia. "The government of the Russian Federation, the Russian leadership, promised us a solution to the oil problem. We have done everything they wanted. The time has come for them to keep their promises. If it does not happen, we have the right to act in the same way, to be free in our decisions. I mean to raise the issue of the Russian Federation paying for Russian oil transit across Belarus, to pay for the land used for oil and gas pipelines, as well as for Russian Federation property here."
Now, tough talk is certainly nothing new to Lukashenka -- even crazy talk that is dangerous for his country's interests. But his illegitimate regime, already causing ever-increasing dissent from within Belarus and from the European Union, really gets into trouble if it goes too far in alienating its' big brother to the east.
Russia's Economic Development and Trade Ministry has already decried the imposition of the transit duty as a break of the terms agreed to. But Russia's next steps aren't yet determined.
The U.S. State Department weighed in on the matter also. Spokesman Sean McCormack told journalists in Washington that imposing a duty on Russian crude oil transit reveals the "rotten core" of the regime of Lukashenka.
Indeed so. But there have been plenty of evidences of other kinds (illegal and corrupt elections; severe persecution of political opposition; shutting off freedoms of speech, assembly and religion; and so on) to show the world this "rotten core" before.
