Context: The US-Iran talks lasted more than 21 hours and ended inconclusively. A few days earlier, just hours before his own ultimatum was set to expire, Donald Trump announced a temporary truce. Earlier, he demanded that Tehran open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7, threatening that Iran would be “living in hell” if the country did not comply. When Iran refused, Trump said the U.S. Navy would begin to block the strait. Against this backdrop, the oil market was in a frenzy. On April 7, Brent fluctuated between $107 and $110 per barrel. After midnight, it fell to approximately $93. Meanwhile, WTI dropped by over 9% to around $92 per barrel.
Discussing the consequences of the Middle East conflict and fluctuations in oil prices on the April 8, 2026 broadcast of the talk show Budni on Alpha Radio and SBTV, Ivan Eismant, head of the Belteleradiocompany, noted that Belarus receives energy resources from Russia at prices below the global market level. He went on to discuss the events of 2020 and criticized those who proposed changing the supply structure at that time.
“You would have to be, I guess, a traitor to your homeland to develop a plan for the reanimation of Belarus. This plan was developed in 2020 by opponents of the authorities. It stated that we should give up Russian energy resources — in effect, reduce them to about 40% — and switch to a global program of liquefied gas supplied from the United States. <...> A similar proposal was related to the oil pipeline and oil in general,” Eismant said.
The Weekly Top Fake team could not find any mentions of a “plan to reanimate Belarus” that involved refusing Russian energy resources and transitioning to American LNG. However, we found a politician who publicly discussed the need to reduce Russian energy supplies to 30-40% in 2020.
“We need to strive to only buy 30-40 percent of our oil from the Russian Federation. 30 percent should be imported via the Baltics, and another 30 percent should come through Ukraine — a proven way,” said Aleksandr Lukashenko at a meeting on improving the efficiency of petroleum product exports.
The speech was then also broadcast on Belarus-1, a channel belonging to Belteleradiocompany, which Eismant heads.
That statement was made in January 2020, at the height of the oil conflict with Russia over the tax maneuver. The parties could not agree on the price of supplies. At that time, Aleksandr Lukashenko directly emphasized the need to find an alternative to Russian oil to reduce dependence on a single supplier and strengthen Minsk’s negotiating position. He even went so far as to openly list possible sources of such supplies, including the United States:
“A decision has been made to purchase oil at world prices, regardless of the origin — Azerbaijani, Saudi, Norwegian, or American — to deliver to our refineries and produce petroleum products. That is, from alternative sources.. Of course, this does not exclude our main supplier, the Russian Federation. Currently, there is no full alternative to Russian oil supplies — In full. However, as we agreed, we need to diversify.”
In 2020, Lukashenko also discussed the need for an alternative to Russian gas. He referred to the price set by Gazprom for Belarus as “forcing integration.” He claimed that Moscow had hinted that Belarus would have to align itself more closely with Russia in exchange for unified energy prices.