Context: Lithuania has allocated an additional €800,000 for the ongoing legal dispute with Belaruskali. The company is demanding $12 billion in compensation from Vilnius for the early termination of the 2022 contract for the transit of Belarusian potash fertilisers. The Lithuanian authorities are calling the lawsuit an act of political pressure.
“The bad guys in Washington and Brussels”, as well as Canadians who lobbied for sanctions against Belarus and who “don’t really care about democracy”, have driven up world coffee prices, said political commentator Ihar Tur in his programme Propaganda on the ONT TV channel on 16 February 2026.
“Canada is Belaruskali’s main competitor in potash fertilisers. As soon as sanctions were imposed on us, the Canadians entered the coffee market in Brazil and Vietnam instead of us. They offered completely different prices for their fertilisers, which have always been higher than those in Belarus. And when the competitor was pushed out of the market by capitalists through political decisions, Canadians went crazy and raised their prices through the roof.”
The main producers of the most popular Arabica and Robusta coffees are Brazil and Vietnam. A month before the U.S. imposed sanctions on Belaruskali, the cost of potash was around $630 per tonne, while Arabica coffee was priced at $4.50 per kilogramme and Robusta at approximately $2.
The introduction of U.S. restrictions caused a surge in potash prices, a consequence of disrupted supply chains and global market volatility. At the peak of the situation, in April 2022, fertiliser prices rose by about 90%, Arabica increased by 30%, and Robusta by roughly 10%.
As Tur put it, coffee prices soared “through the roof” not in 2022, but when potash prices fell on the global market between 2024 and 2025. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has attributed the price increase to severe droughts in Brazil and Vietnam. In 2025, unfavourable weather conditions were compounded by Donald Trump’s imposition of 50% duties on coffee imports from Brazil.