Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev held talks Thursday that brought no compromise on a number of prickly issues in their fast deteriorating ties.
Medvedev's top foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, admitted the two leaders didn't discuss one of their main points of contention - a $1 billion loan Belarus has accused Moscow of holding out on.
Amid tensions, Belarus has said Moscow is withholding the second tranche of the loan to its former Soviet neighbor, whose low-powered economy has contracted further amid the financial crisis.
Russian media had speculated the delayed loan payment was the main motivation for Lukashenko's visit with Medvedev at his Black Sea summer residence in Sochi.
Medvedev also announced he would attended military exercises in Belarus later this year fielded by the Collective Security Organization, a post-Soviet regional security grouping, Prikhodko said, quoted by Russian news agencies.
The two leaders' talks Thursday were their first since April as Belarus seeks to improve relations with the West and downplay the image that it lies in Moscow's orbit. But the two countries' relationship has changed for the worse over a series of trade disputes since.
In an interview with Russian daily Kommersant on the eve of his visit, Lukashenko accused Russia of crippling its economy with higher prices on natural gas exports and a series of new customs taxes.
"They wrote about me that I was flying to Moscow to ask forgiveness. We don't plan to ask anything from anybody," the Belarus president wrote.
"In two years' time, they raised the price of natural gas three times....first sugar, sweets and then milk were banned from Russia," he raged. "Tell me would the European Union do such things?"
Lukashenko has ruled Belarus in an authoritarian fashion since 1994 and was once famously dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by Washington. But over the past year, the E.U. has switched to a policy of engagement, widely seen as an effort to pull Belarus out of Russia's orbit.
Moscow meanwhile has been irked by Belarus' moves to seek closer ties with the E.U.