KEY POINTS:
The Kremlin's attitude to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for years followed the adage: "He's a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch."
But a dispute between the two neighbours over energy shipments that has this week disrupted Russian oil supplies to central Europe shows Moscow's patience has finally run out with the Belarus leader.
"We are totally fed up with Lukashenko because too much of what he has promised he has failed to carry out," said a Russian Government official who did not want to be identified.
Russia and Belarus, ex-Soviet neighbours who describe each other as "brotherly nations", looked far from fraternal this week.
First, Moscow trimmed its subsidies to Belarus by raising gas prices and ending supplies of tax-free oil. Lukashenko then retaliated by levying hefty transit fees on Russian oil crossing its territory bound for Europe. The Kremlin in turn halted a pipeline shipping crude to central Europe via Belarus, saying Minsk was illegally siphoning off oil for its own use.
So where did it all go wrong?
Russia has been accused of using its energy resources to bully its neighbours. But many in Moscow see Belarus not as a neighbour but a needy offshoot of Russia. Moscow sends cheap oil and gas to Belarus and buys most of Belarus' exports. There are no border restrictions between the two.
So when Lukashenko retaliated for Moscow's energy moves, his behaviour was seen in Moscow as ingratitude by a rebellious subordinate.
"If you feed them [Belarussians], they are your brothers and your friends, but if you take them away from the feeding trough then we become their enemies," the nationa-list Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Rossiya television. "If they want to be a sovereign nation then they can pay their own bills."
Some analysts say the step that finally exhausted Russia's patience was Lukashenko's haggling over Beltransgas, the Belarussian state gas distribution network.
Russian officials believed they had a firm promise from Lukashenko that he would cede 50 per cent of Beltransgas to Russian gas giant Gazprom at a heavily discounted price in exchange for Gazprom keeping prices rises down.
In a deal agreed minutes before a January 1 deadline, the Russian firm paid US$2.5 billion ($3.6 billion) for the 50 per cent stake - several times more than it expected to spend.
"Vladimir Putin thinks of himself, quite rightly, as the leader of a Group of Eight country and here is the leader of a small country with a small economy who does not do what he promised," said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
Tension had been bubbling between Russia and Belarus long before the latest energy disputes.
Washington has described Lukashenko as the last dictator in Europe because of disputed elections and arrests of opposition leaders. Moscow has found itself in the awkward position of defending its ally to the West.
When they have met in public, President Putin's body language towards Lukashenko has been chilly.
"It is high time that Russia understood who it is dealing with: an irresponsible person, an illegitimate President," former Belarus leader Stanislav Shushkevich told Ekho Moskvy radio.
"Lukashenko needs to be put in his place and this is what Russia should do."
- REUTERS
