Will “milk war” with Russia be renewed?



It seems that the head sanitary inspector of Russia Gennady Onischenko is going to launch another “milk war” with Belarus and that is seen from the interview to Russian mass media on July 2. And this happened in spite of the Agriculture Ministers of the two countries seemed to regulate the day before all points at issue of Belarusian milk and also meat delivery to the Russian market.

According to Onischenko’s words, Belarusian side is trying to abort all arrangements of “milk question” and technical order, and this can lead to cancellation of transition period and new withholding of dairy delivery from this country to Russian Federation.

The head sanitary inspector of Russia declared that Russian side, strictly meeting the commitments, accepted more than 400 items to the Russian market according the three lists with the condition of fulfillment of all requirements of Russian legislation till the end of July. Moreover, since reaching the agreements, derisively small amount of examples –approximately 30 came from the side of Belarus for the expertise. “This situation can be appraised by us as a planned work from the side of Belarus to abort the reached agreements”, - added Onischenko.

He also leaved open the possibility that the problems of that kind can return the process of negotiations “to positions of the first decade of June”, when Russian Federal Consumer Rights Protection and Human Health Control Service cancelled or freezed execution of permissions for 1,4 thousands of dairy products from Belarus which are delivered to Russia.

According to independent Belarusian experts, one can’t exclude another one dash of aggravation of Belarusian-Russian relationship due to “milk topic”. Politologist Aleksandr Klaskovsky thinks that modern Russian-Belarusian relations are characterized by permanent scandals connected with the fact that Russia doesn’t know how to behave itself towards Belarus, which contacts more actively with the West and gets financial help form it lately. “From one side, the decision at which the Ministers of Agriculture arrived and from the other side – declarations of Onischenko show that in Russia the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does. That’s why another scandal and abortion of deliveries of Belarusian dairy products to Russia are quite possible”, - believes the expert.

One should mention that this harsh declaration of the Russian official came in the same day when Belarus got one more tranche of credit (more than 600 billions of dollars) from the International Monetary Fund. And Russia doesn’t hurry to give Belarus the promised earlier 500 billions of dollars which it promised earlier. In its turn, the actions of the official Minsk, its active contacts with European structures and now with the USA (let’s recall the visit of the American congressmen to Minsk this week and their negotiations with Aleksandr Lukashenko, who declared that he is eager to normalize the relations with Washington) irritates Moscow much. That’s why one can’t leave the possibility of other surprises in these two-side relations including economical ones.

Gennady LOGINOV