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The authoritarian leader of Belarus said Wednesday he is willing to shut off energy transit from Russia to the EU if Poland closes its border with Belarus as part of tensions with migrants trying to cross into the EU.
Alexander Lukashenko made a similar threat last month, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to warn that a shutoff of Gazprom-owned natural gas pipelines running across Belarus would “would be a violation of our transit contract.”
But Wednesday morning Lukashenko appeared to brush that warning off.
“As Poland together with others takes more action against Belarus, do they think I am going to stick to some contracts? Come on, they should know better,” Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian media, according to the state-owned Belta news agency.
Lukashenko has encouraged people to fly to Minsk from the Middle East; government agencies then help them get to the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to make efforts to cross the frontier. All three countries have beefed up border security and have threatened to shut the border for normal transit if Belarus doesn’t change course.
“Poland has this idea to close the border with Belarus. Fine, let them do it,” Lukashenko said. “If they close it, then they need to think how they are going to buy energy from Russia.”
He also noted that a border closure would halt trade flows from Europe into Russia and China.
Source: Politico
