Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has issued a threat to Ukraine by saying his country is planning to stop the export of fuel and electricity to Ukraine if the current tensions with Russia escalated.
“If you clash with Russia, we won’t be with you. We will cut off all fuel and lubricant supplies, electricity too, with Russia,” the Kommersant daily reports Lukashenko as saying.
The Ukrainian diesel fuel market is heavily dependent on imported supplies from Belarus and Russia. The three countries are also part of an energy island dating back to the Soviet era which connects their electricity grids.
However, Ukraine has secured the European Commission’s support for its efforts to synchronize its national power system with the European Union’s European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSOE) and is moving steadily toward completing this process in 2023.
It plans to work in so-called isolated mode from the Russian and Belarusian grids on two occasions this year, with the first taking place at the end of this month.
