Potash, sanctions and transit

The key turning point came on March 26, 2026, when OFAC issued Belarus General License 14, revoked Directive 1, and removed from the SDN list Belaruskali, the Belarusian Potash Company, Agrorozkivt, Belinvestbank, and the Development Bank. OFAC explicitly stated that, in consultation with the State Department, it had concluded that circumstances "no longer warrant" the previous restrictions.

Reuters reported as early as March 19 on a deal in which Belarus released 250 prisoners and the United States agreed to sanctions relief for the financial sector, including Belinvestbank, while lifting the remaining restrictions on potash companies. The Associated Press, as reported by ABC News, on March 26 linked this decision not only to potash companies but also to two Belarusian state banks and the Ministry of Finance.

The structure of the decision matters no less than its political pretext. Had Washington wanted to confine itself to a symbolic concession in exchange for the release of prisoners, it could have chosen a narrower package. Instead, the elements affected are precisely those that enable a more complex arrangement: potash exports, banking settlements, sovereign guarantees, and financial infrastructure. This is exactly why the "potash deal" model remains the strongest explanation of the package's mechanics.

The official and pro-government Belarusian interpretation directly tied this decision to the Nezhinsky GOK. REFORM.news relayed the position of pro-government economist Georgy Grits: the Ministry of Finance was needed because of securities and sovereign guarantees, the Development Bank because it services the Chinese credit, and Belinvestbank as the project's settlement bank. BelTA reproduced the same logic and recalled the project's stated capacity — up to 2 million tonnes of potash per year.

Here, however, lies the fundamental boundary between what has been confirmed and what remains Minsk's narrative. Open sources do confirm that the Nezhinsky project is real and capital-intensive. AidData records that in 2016, the China Development Bank extended a $1.4 billion loan for the project; the government of Belarus served as guarantor, insurance was provided by Sinosure, and the mining and processing facility itself was pledged as collateral.

Argus Media reported on the possible commissioning of Nezhinsky GOK in Q2 2026 and separately noted that the growth in Belarus's export capacity is partly linked to the launch of this project.

But the next claim — that Washington or American investors are already interested specifically in purchasing Nezhinsky GOK — remains unconfirmed from the American side. Neither Reuters, nor AP/ABC, nor OFAC speak directly of a pending American acquisition of the facility. Therefore, the stronger conclusion here is different: the package has already been constructed to open the possibility for a more complex investment-trade arrangement, but it does not prove that this arrangement has already materialized.

If the "potash deal" model best explains how the package is structured, then the commodity leverage model best explains why Washington needs it.

Its empirical basis is particularly strong. Argus Media as early as December 2025 directly linked the partial return of Belarusian potash to the possibility of using it as leverage amid the tariff conflict with Canada. Good Authority described the same logic from a political science perspective: friction with the primary supplier increases the value of alternative sources. HillNotes, an analytical project of the Canadian Parliament, demonstrated the scale of dependence: in 2024, the United States imported 12.1 million tonnes of potash from Canada.

This is precisely where it is important to distinguish between substitution and leverage. The same Argus Media explicitly states that the United States cannot replace the entire Canadian volume with Belarusian product: American demand is estimated at 11–12 million tonnes per year, whereas historic shipments from Belarus in 2017–2021 averaged approximately 635,000 tonnes per year, or less than 6% of consumption. Belarus cannot become the new Canada. But it can become a tool for expanding the negotiating space.

An additional important element is the tariff asymmetry. In the Canadian analysis published by The Walrus and in McCarthy Tetrault's review, this logic is described as part of a broader trade conflict: Washington maneuvers around potash more cautiously than around other import categories because American agriculture is too heavily dependent on fertilizers.

This is an important indicator of a broader configuration. Belarusian potash here functions not simply as an export commodity. It is an element of American food, trade, and tariff policy. And when a resource begins to play a role simultaneously in several political domains, this is precisely one of the indicators of an emerging architecture.

The third key layer is the Lithuanian one. This is where the "Baltic trade-off" model proves most useful.

After the cessation of Belarusian fertilizer transit, Lithuania incurred not only political but also quite measurable economic costs. EADaily, citing the director of Klaipeda port Algis Latakas, reported that the port had already lost at least 56 million euros, with annual direct losses to the port directorate amounting to approximately 14 million euros. Before the sanctions cut-off, in 2021, nearly 12 million tonnes of Belarusian potash fertilizers passed through Klaipeda — almost a third of the port's total cargo turnover.

Carnegie Politika adds that Lithuanian Railways was losing approximately 100 million euros per year, and that the Belarusian side filed an international arbitration claim for 12 billion euros. It also notes that Vilnius has already spent hundreds of thousands of euros on legal costs without any guarantee of a favorable outcome.

This leads to an important conclusion: for Vilnius, the question of potash transit is no longer reducible to a moral stance against Lukashenko. It is also a question of money, litigation risks, and whether it is acceptable to continue a policy under which transit revenues flow from Lithuania to Russia.

This is why John Coule's route through Vilnius was not a diplomatic accident but part of the deal's logic. In an interview with LRT, Coule explicitly stated that Belarusian potash fertilizers should go through Lithuania and that Washington would like negotiations with Minsk at least at the deputy foreign minister level. This means that for the United States, what matters is not only access to the commodity but also a specific transit corridor that returns Belarus to Baltic and European logistics.

But this logic has a hard constraint. RFE/RL emphasizes that EU sanctions on Belarusian potash remain in force, meaning Klaipeda cannot automatically become a full-scale hub of the former type. Moreover, the European Union has already built in an escalating schedule of duties: 40–45 euros per tonne, then 60 euros in the summer of 2026, 80 euros in 2027, and 350 euros by 2028.

Under this framework, Lithuanian transit can serve primarily non-European destinations — the United States and Latin American markets — but not a free return of Belarusian potash to the EU. Nevertheless, the very fact that the transit question is being discussed as a subject of coordination among the United States, Lithuania, Belarus, and de facto Brussels shows that we are dealing with a multi-layered construction.

The war in Iran, which began on February 28, 2026, sharply altered the context in which this story was perceived in Washington and on the fertilizer market. It can be described as an amplifier that elevated the political and economic significance of decisions already under discussion.

The scale of the shock is confirmed by top-tier sources. According to Carnegie, the Strait of Hormuz normally handles 20–30% of global fertilizer traffic, including urea, ammonia, phosphates, and sulfur, and after February 28, movement was nearly paralyzed. IFPRI reports a traffic decline of more than 70%, and UN News records a drop in shipping from approximately 130 vessels per day to single-digit transits.

The result was a price shock. NPR reported a roughly 30% increase in the price of urea, while Fortune drew attention to the particularly sensitive timing: the sanctions relief came precisely when American farmers were completing their purchases for the spring planting season.

The AP, as reported by ABC News, directly linked the March OFAC decision to Donald Trump's promise to support American farmers affected by the war with Iran. But technically, the crisis primarily hit the nitrogen segment of fertilizers — urea, ammonia, and the gas component of production — rather than potash per se. These are different market segments, and it would be incorrect to draw a direct causal link between the nitrogen deficit and the lifting of sanctions on Belarusian potash.

Therefore, the Iranian factor in the Belarusian potash story is most accurately described as follows: interest in Belarusian shipments, sanctions negotiations, and the Lithuanian track gained new political cover after the war began. It is in this sense that Iran accelerated an already-forming arrangement. It sharply elevated its urgency and convenience for public justification within the United States.

Not all explanatory models work equally well as evidence of a systemic arrangement.

The hypothesis that Moscow consciously "permits" the deal is logically plausible. Mining.com and RFE/RL confirm that after the sanctions, Belarusian potash moved through Russian ports, primarily Ust-Luga and Saint Petersburg, where Russian product had priority. This makes it understandable why offloading these routes could be advantageous for Moscow. But there is no direct confirmation that the Kremlin specifically approved or encouraged the current arrangement. Too much here rests on inference from silence.

The Trophy Collection model also remains useful, but mainly for describing the facade. AP and Reuters indeed show how personalistic the communication channel was around John Coule, and LRT documents that he acted not only as a humanitarian negotiator but also as a conduit for the transit-economic agenda. But this style in itself does not disprove the existence of a more systemic underpinning.

The hypothesis of "transit insurance" for the Lukashenko family remains even weaker. It helps to keep in mind the logic of neo-patrimonial self-insurance, but open sources do not link the March deal directly to preparations for a hereditary transfer of power. As a background framework — useful. As central evidence — no.

The most important unexamined link is China. It is here that the "potash deal" may encounter its hardest external limit.

AidData shows that the Nezhinsky project was built on a Chinese loan of $1.4 billion, a sovereign guarantee from Belarus, and Sinosure insurance. The mining and processing facility itself was pledged as collateral. This means that any discussion of selling the project, bringing in a new investor, or restructuring ownership runs up against not only Washington and Minsk but also Beijing's interests.

At the same time, none of the open sources examined in this verification record a clear Chinese reaction to the prospect of a sale or other reconfiguration of Nezhinsky GOK. This is a serious gap. If Beijing insists on loan repayment, if it does not recognize the clean title after nationalization, or if it prefers to keep the project in a mode of political freeze, then the Chinese factor may constrain the viability of the entire construction more strongly than the rhetorical hesitations of the United States or Lithuania.

Therefore, China is not a secondary detail but a key blind spot. Until it is investigated, one cannot definitively answer where the sanctions window of opportunity ends and the legal ceiling of the entire deal begins.

The cautious but substantive conclusion is as follows. The formula "political prisoners in exchange for sanctions" describes only the surface layer of what is happening. Beneath it, a more complex arrangement is discernible, one that combines at least four elements.

First, Minsk converts a political resource — the fate of prisoners and its own willingness to engage in selective releases — into access to export revenue, financial normalization, and potentially a new investment maneuver. Second, Washington uses Belarusian potash not only as an object of a deal with Lukashenko but also as part of its own food and trade policy, including additional leverage in relations with Canada. Third, Lithuania turns out to be not merely an object of pressure but an independent node in this arrangement. Fourth, the Iranian crisis does not explain the origin of the arrangement but renders it politically more urgent and publicly justifiable.

When these layers begin to operate simultaneously, what emerges is not simply a series of episodes but a prototype of a new configuration of relations around Belarus. Its core is neither a "Minsk pivot toward the West" nor a humanitarian detente as such. Its core is the transformation of Belarus into a functional node in a broader chain of exchanges: political, commercial, transit-related, and sanctions-related.

This construction remains incomplete. It depends on EU decisions regarding duties and sanctions, on Lithuania's readiness to move beyond symbolic contacts, on the durability of American interest after the initial diplomatic trophies, and on what China says about Nezhinsky GOK. But already, the facts suggest something greater than a random set of concessions.