22 October 2026
Belarus’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Valentin Rybakov, said a vessel carrying 30,000 tonnes of Belarusian potassium chloride (the most common potash fertiliser) has arrived in New Orleans and been fully cleared through customs. He said another cargo will be sent to the US “in the near future”; its size was not given. The cargo sailed from a port near St Petersburg, as Lithuania’s Klaipėda remains closed to Belarusian potash.
The US lifted sanctions on Belaruskali and the Belarusian Potash Company in spring 2026, and in the same week as the customs clearance also on Belaruskali’s CEO Andrei Rybakov. For comparison, in 2017–2021 Belarus sold an average of 635,000 tonnes of potash a year to the US, while total US imports in 2025 were 5.6 million tonnes.
An important detail: analysts see the first delivery as more of a political gesture than a large-scale return to the market. EU sanctions on Belarusian potash remain in force, so nothing changes for European trading companies — every transaction still needs to be checked separately against US and EU lists.
Sources: Reform.news (via BelTA), 22 October 2026; TU News (Argus data), 4 October 2026.