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Belarus ready to promptly respond to restrictions on shipping potash fertilizers via Lithuania

MINSK, 16 August (BelTA) – Belarus is ready to promptly respond to restrictions on shipping potash fertilizers via Lithuania. Belarusian Transport and Communications Minister Aleksei Avramenko made the statement after delivering a report to the head of state on 16 August, BelTA has learned.

The official said: “We signed an agreement with the Russian Federation in February. Since February we’ve shipped practically about 1 million tonnes of oil products via Russian ports. Respectively we have an alternative. Those are ports in Murmansk and Leningrad Oblast. These schemes have been tried and tested. This is why we are going to quite promptly respond to changes or the introduction of any additional restrictions on the transportation of potash fertilizers.”

BelTA reported earlier that alternative ways of exporting Belarusian products were touched upon during the routine meeting of Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Transport and Communications Minister Aleksei Avramenko on 16 August. The matter was also raised during Aleksandr Lukashenko’s meeting with representatives of the general public, experts, and mass media titled as the Big Conversation with the President on 9 August. Aleksandr Lukashenko responded to Lithuania’s threats to stop the transit of potash fertilizers. He noted: “They’ve started inventing things. Shot themselves in the foot. And now they want to prevent us from using their ports for shipping chemical potash fertilizers.”

Aleksandr Lukashenko said that Belarus will reroute shipments to other ports, to ports in the Russian territory then. “Listen, we will deliver these volumes. We will load them in Murmansk. Not a problem. And we will deliver them to China via the shortest Northern Sea Route. It is our main market. And to India, the southeast. We have to find a way out of this situation now before we drive each other into a corner. But the ball is on the other side,” he said.

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