It seems that Berarusian leader believes he should be granted Russian oil by dumped prices and to resell it to EU by a number of times greater price in return for declaring himself a Russian close ally? Those ancient Soviet times, when marginal areas of russian spoken people lived good on expense of the large interior motherland, have long passed away never to return. In soviet era Belarusia was granted the most profitable light industries to make huge profits selling these products to vast population of the motherland. If Belarusia does not want to be an integrative part of the Russian Federation then it must comply with the rules that exist between any nations/states in the world. That means having fair relations in trade based on the mutual benefit. US is not really interested in feeding Belarusia just for having it more distanced from Russia. The same holds for Europe. They both can get from Russia everything they want and Russia is surely much more important for them. As a Serb, I though believe that those smal countries which nonetheless do gravitate towards Russia (that might be from various reasons, at least) should take a great care not to damage Russia's relations versus other major players on the global scene. For example, the Tsar Nikolai Romanov sacrificed everything He could for Serbia: He was forced to watch his children get murderred, he lost his throne and his state, and all Russian people sufferred for not less than 73 years just for allowing to be dragged into the war (WWI) because of the small Russian ally, that is, because of Serbia. Such a fall is never to be allowed anymore, for if it happens, then we all lose the basic foothold. It is of course that we, smallish Russian allies like Serbia, Belarusia, etc., do expect rightfully for support and help from Russia, but all of us are also expected to take care of genuine Russian interests. Doing this, our major sponsor/supporter (Russia) will be more effective in helping us.