Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko expects Russia to build a new Baltic Sea port for exports of Belarusian potash which were hit by Western sanctions, he said on Friday after he met Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders met as Russia held military exercises in Belarus as part of a buildup of troops near Ukraine that has prompted Western warnings of an imminent Russian invasion. Moscow denies any such plan and says such warnings are dangerous.
Lukashenko indicated that the construction would take at least a year: "We will be loading - within a year or a year and a half, I do not know ... we will be loading these millions of tonnes of cargo there." Minsk said earlier this month that it diverted the exports to Russian ports, and Kremlin has said that the "issue is on the agenda".However, Russia's Baltic Sea ports, according to industry sources, do not have enough free capacity to handle BPC's 12.5 million tonnes a year, and it is impossible to accommodate the shipments immediately.
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