Oil Feud Reflects Growing Rift Between Russia and Belarus, Once Close Allies

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" The quarrel involves a crude-oil subsidy that for years has helped prop up the government of the authoritarian leader of Belarus, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. The subsidy agreement, which yielded billions in profits annually to Belarus’s national oil company, ended on New Year’s Eve, and Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, said he had no intention of restoring it."