Kremlin is ready to provide limited financial assistance to Minsk

Whether the EurAsEC’s Anti-Crisis Fund Council allocates the final USD 400 million tranche to Belarus will be decided in late 2014.

The official reason for the delay is the lack of harmonization of all issues, although earlier, Russia’s Ambassador to Belarus Alexander Surikov suggested that Belarus could receive the sixth tranche within the EurAsEC Anti-Crisis Fund’s loan in September-October 2014. In June 2014 Belarus received a substantial USD 2 billion loan from Russia’s VTB Bank, which helped her to safeguard the international reserves and to postpone the national currency’s devaluation. The Kremlin’s financial aid to Belarus is just enough to maintain some socio-economic stability in the country, but insufficient to support economic growth and improve people’s well-being. In the future, Russia will preserve this approach to dealing with Belarus and will put forward harsher requirements for Belarus to privatise her large assets.