Lithuania is not considering resuming Belarusian fertiliser transit, a presidential adviser said on Tuesday amid suggestions to ease sanctions on the neighbouring country’s potash exports.
“Currently, both US and European Union sanctions are in place on potash fertilisers, so there is simply no point in talking about any resumption of shipments,” Ramūnas Dilba, the president’s chief adviser on environment and infrastructure, told the radio Žinių Radijas.
He was commenting on last week’s BNS report that Birių Krovinių Terminalas (BKT), a Klaipėda bulk cargo terminal controlled by Igor Udovickij, had proposed a settlement with the government that would allow Belarusian fertiliser shipments via Lithuania to resume.
Dilba noted that even if US and EU sanctions were lifted, Lithuania has legal tools under national law to “protect its interests”.
“If we see that a company is profiting from fertiliser transit and, perhaps indirectly, funding [Russia’s] military actions [in Ukraine] or strengthening the regime, then this runs counter to Lithuania’s national interests, in which case we could apply our national legal instruments when making decisions,” he said.
In his letter to Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas and the government in June, BKT CEO Ruslan Malinin offered to withdraw the company’s lawsuit from the EU General Court in exchange for allowing the transit of fertiliser, produced by the Belarusian state-owned company Belaruskali, via Lithuania and BKT’s terminal.
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