OREANDA-NEWS. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has denied allegations voiced by Russia accusing Minsk of being a bad-faith supplier of foodstuffs to the Russian market.

"We have been strongly against dishonest practices with Western food deliveries to the Russian market. Someone thought they could replace labels and sell these products in Russia. We will not allow this. But we will process the products we want on the territory of Belarus," Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko made a statement to this effect at a special conference on December 3 to discuss measures taken to remove the ban on the import of Belarusian products to Russia and the transit of sanctioned goods.

According to Lukashenko, in the phone conversation with Vladimir Putin he pledged that Belarus would fulfil its obligations on the external border of the Customs Union to prevent the import of sanctioned goods to Russia. "But I also warned Putin that Belarusian companies which had concluded or would conclude agreements on the delivery of products to Belarus with Western partners would continue implementing these agreements. It means that we would not join Russia's sanctions (and Russia did not demand it) and continue to work in the same mode. For example, if we imported meat, milk, vegetables, fruit and fish, processed them on the territory of Belarus and then sold these products in the Eurasian space, including in the Customs Union, we would continue to do so. The Russian President said that he did not mind it," the Belarusian leader said.

Lukashenko accentuated the point that Belarus had been told to use its customs, border and other services to prevent direct import of sanctioned goods to Russia. "No one said that the transit of commodities to Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and other countries via Belarus must be stopped," Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko also mentioned the fact that since the time the embargo was introduced, Belarus' food exports to Russia had increased by only 2 to 5%. Belarus did not even use up the export quotas which were harmonized with Russia at the beginning of the year. "Even if we wanted to, we cannot import more meat and milk from the West than we did before the Russian sanctions and process them here because we do not have extra technical capacities," Lukashenko said.