Lithuania to reject potash sanctions easing – president

July 22, BPN. Vilnius will not cave in to support the exclusion of potash fertilizers from sanctions against the Alaksandar Łukašenka regime, the Lithuanian president said on July 21 in Klaipeda.

“They are going to put pressure on us too so that we will ease problems that arose against the backdrop of the food crisis by allowing exports of fertilizers from Belarus,” Delfi quoted Gitanas Nausėda as saying. “I have told all of my counterparts that we will not agree, and really Lithuania’s position remains the same. It has not changed and will not change. We consider it absolutely wrong to ease sanctions against dictators instead of tightening them. Especially now.”

He blamed the global food crisis on Moscow’s decision to pull out of the Ukrainian grain deal, stressing that the potash sanctions had nothing to do with food shortages.

In 2022, the European Union, the United States and many other countries imposed an embargo on Belarusian potash over the country’s complicity in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, effectively blocking the key export route via Lithuania and a possible alternative route transiting Ukraine.

Belarus had shipped about 11 million tons of potash via the Klaipeda port.