Mr Alexander Lukashenko president of Belarus said that if necessary, Belarus will be able to get additional volumes of oil from countries other than Russia.

The Belarusian head of state reminded the gathering that Belarus had already used the capability of getting Azerbaijani oil through Ukraine via the Odessa Brody pipeline once before. If Russia cannot spare 3 or 4 million tonnes of extra oil for us, we will get oil from Azerbaijan, Venezuela, or somewhere else. We will use the Ukrainian vector.”

Mr Lukashenko said that “But I don’t like these options because working with Russia is much simpler. But in the past we have already had to buy several million tonnes of Azerbaijani and Venezuelan oil had to bring it to Belarus and process it.”