Lithuania’s top diplomat urges developing countries to stop relying on Belarusian fertilizers

May 5, BPN. Developing countries should reduce their dependence on Belarusian and Russian fertilizers and develop their alternative production, Lithuania’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomėnas told the EU Foreign Affairs Council on May 4.

The EU should send a clear message to its partners that it would not ease sanctions and that Russia will lose the war that it unleashed against Ukraine, he said. The Global South should distance itself from Russia, he stressed.

The EU, as one of the largest providers of support, can effectively combine instruments of external action and help partner countries strengthen their food security, he added.

Russia is deliberately destroying Ukrainian grain reserves, blocking the export of agricultural products and manipulating energy resources, the Lithuanian foreign ministry said. It also accused Russia of threatening global food availability and spreading misinformation about sanctions as it seeks to ease the restrictions, including with regard to the transit of fertilizers from Belarus, it noted.

The Baltic states and Poland continue to oppose milder sanctions as suggested by some EU members, Lithuanian envoy to the EU Arnoldas Pranckevičius told journalists on May 2.

Sanctions against Belarusian potash were imposed as part of a sectoral package in 2021.

Last winter, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union might impose new sanctions on Alaksandr Łukašenka’s regime for its support of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The EU then hit Russia with the 10th sanctions package, which didn’t mention Belarus.

In March, Poland suggested that the bloc should immediately sanction Minsk because of its prosecution of prominent human rights defender Aleś Bialacki and other activists.

The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, later said that the union “stands ready to respond with further sanctions” to the expected deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus.