He does what he wants to! Lukashenko dictates his will to Moscow, using bluff and blackmail

It is premature to talk about the integration of Russia and Belarus that allegedly began as a result of the last meeting between Putin and Lukashenko, believes network analyst Andrey Nalgin. The Belarusian dictator still has a very powerful leverage over his Russian counterpart.

The fact is that Belarus has suspended the transit of Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary, and in return is using the capacity of one of the branches of the Druzhba oil pipeline to receive oil through Ukraine - along the Odessa-Brody route from Azerbaijan.

It can be called a coincidence that Minsk stopped pumping Russian oil on the day of Lukashenko's visit to the Kremlin, but it is no coincidence that the Belarusian dictator again asked Putin for money - as much as $ 3 billion. According to Lukashenko, they are allegedly not enough for a covid, which allegedly did not exist in Belarus…. Russia wants to associate this handout with integration. Finance Minister Siluanov said that the issue of additional aid could be considered, but the main task is to stimulate the process by signing strategic plans for the integration of our economies.

But this bargaining, according to Nalgin, is unsuccessful, because Minsk insists that integration should really begin in 2025, or even better, in 2027. That is, when Putin's presidential term expires.

Apparently, there will not be, until the union parliament is created, a single currency will not be introduced - these issues are again postponed. But Putin's wish to establish a common macroeconomic policy in the coming years will be impossible to fulfill in view of the gigantic differences between the two economies. It takes decades.

“In short, the bottom line is everything the same - “either donkey, or padishah”. And Belarus has been successfully pulling such a bagpipe for 20+ years! And Russia pays and pays everything: every step forward in integration costs our country hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars...”, - writes Nalgin.

And this is despite the fact that the debt of Belarus to Russia is $ 18.1 billion, and all the reserves of the Belarusian Central Bank are only $ 7.8 billion. That is, Minsk will not survive without the support of the Kremlin! And nevertheless, Lukashenko twists the creditor as he wants, using bluff and blackmail. A unique state of affairs...

Brilliant (in quotation marks) geopolitics are sitting in Moscow, as soon as they have brought “a simple and understandable situation in the Union State" to such a wild state...