Oligarch Rybolovlev pulls Lukashenka out of the sanctions swamp
It is reported from Minsk that the Russian oligarch, the president of the Monaco football club, Dmitry Rybolovlev, is holding separate negotiations with Alexander Lukashenko on the subject of lifting US sanctions on Belarusian potash and personally on the head of Belarus.
Rybolovlev, having earned money in Russia, has long and firmly settled in the West: in particular, in the United States, where he is building close relations with a number of leaders of the Democratic Party and the current administration of the White House in his personal interests. Perhaps this explains Rybolovlev’s surprising lack of inclusion in any sanctions lists, despite his declared closeness to the Kremlin for a long time.
The ex-owner of Uralkali, having lost the lion’s share of his fortune on investments in pharmaceuticals (Switzerland), batteries for electric vehicles and real estate (USA), painting and football (Monaco), is frantically looking for a source of replenishment of working capital, deciding to enter the same river twice: to do the sale of now Belarusian potassium.
Sources say that Rybolovlev communicates with Lukashenka through Vladimir Nikolaenko, the ex-director of the Belarusian Potash Company (BPC), and promises the latter to “get Belaruskali and the trader BPC, as well as people associated with them, out of sanctions.” In exchange, the oligarch demands from the president of Belarus to appoint “his” director of the BPC and to pass all the export flows of potassium through his trading house in the United States at prices that will be lower than those established in the world.
On the one hand, Rybolovlev convinces Lukashenka that he will be able to negotiate with the Biden administration, where he has “excellent connections”, despite the anti-Russian policy of the White House. On the other hand, he claims that he will “solve all issues with Putin” so that he does not regard this as an act of betrayal of national interests. The intermediary between the oligarch and the leader of Belarus is the former first deputy general director of the BPC Konstantin Solodovnikov (now working in the management of the Belgian football club Cercle Brugge owned by Rybolovlev), who once had very close financial relations with Lukashenka through a particularly “trusted” person – Nikolaenko
Moreover, according to sources, Rybolovlev is inciting Alexander Grigoryevich to “decrease the heat on the Ukrainian case”, demonstrating to the United States a readiness for dialogue, which will help bring a significant part of the Belarusian economy out of restrictions from both America and the European Union.