Expert: “On January 1, 2007, Russia will cut off gas supplies to Belarus”

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“Lukashenko is trying to bring the deal to a serious scandal and, I think, he will do it,” Co-Chair of the Council on the National Strategy Iosif Diskin said on December 26 commenting to a REGNUM correspondent the situation in the Russian-Belarusian talks on gas price.

Earlier today, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced new gas price for Belarus, $75 per 1,000 cubic meters in money and $30 in assets. In his turn, Gazprom Spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov declared what consequences can follow, if Belarus refuses to switch to the market price.

“The matter is, Lukashenko positions himself inside the Belarusian political elite as supporter of Belarusian governmental and national interests,” Diskin said. “As a result of it, even nationalist groups that opposed Lukashenko started now thinking of giving him relative support presenting Lukashenko as defender of Belarus from an Anschluss.”

“In this situation, Lukashenko has a keen interest to bring the case to its maximal tension instead of settling it,” the expert believes. “So, I think that gas supplies to Belarus will be cut off on January 1, 2007, as it happened once. After that Belarus will flinch, Lukashenko will announce that ‘Russia took the way of gas terrorism’ like he did it before and then he will agree to the proposed price connecting it with the issue of Beltransgaz.”

“So, it will look, to my mind, like this: on January 1, 2007, Russia will cut off gas supply to Russia, after that Lukashenko agrees to the proposed price, gas supply will resume, and the Belarusian president will gain profit as 'fighter for independence',” Iosif Diskin concluded.