As expected, the gas weapon soon entered the scene of the confrontation between Belarus and the European Union. Not that of Alexander Lukashenko, who has none, but the Russian one that passes through its territory to reach the European markets. “We are heating up Europe, and they are threatening us”, the Belarusian president burst out yesterday in the Council of Ministers in Minsk. If the response to the crisis of migrants encamped on the border between Belarus and Poland leads to further sanctions, Lukashenko will reply: «And if we stop the gas supplies, what happens? I advise Poles, Lithuanians and other mindless leaders to think before speaking ».
The threat immediately reversed the drop in natural gas prices: the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline passes through Belarus, a main route to Poland and then to Germany. Just in these days Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, had started to refuel the storage sites in Germany and Austria, the signal expected by the markets. But now Lukashenko casts shadows on the pipeline that carries 20% of Russian gas destined for the EU.
Suspected of complicity in the crisis, called upon to use its influence to resolve it, the Kremlin studies the cards in its hand: after having sent two bombers on the Belarus-Poland border, to mark the territory for the second consecutive day, yesterday Vladimir Putin spoke again by telephone with Angela Merkel, insisting on the need for direct contact between the EU and Lukashenko.
For the moment, the possibility appears remote. From Warsaw, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Lukashenko of engaging in “state terrorism”, waging a new type of war in which “the ammunition is civilians”. “What Lukashenko is doing is irresponsible, we will do everything possible to put an end to it,” added the likely future chancellor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz from Germany.
In the official video of the government meeting in Minsk, Lukashenko is very worried about the fate of migrants camped in the cold between the Belarusian and Polish forests: bring wood, order his ministers to jump up, take care of pregnant women. A cynical power play, attacks from Washington Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Commission: the EU accuses Lukashenko of having orchestrated the sending of hundreds of desperate people to the threshold of Europe, attracted to Minsk with flight-accommodation-visa travel packages and transfer to the border.