Lukashenko, Putin agree to settle outstanding issues soon

“In the autumn, in the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the Union State Treaty, Minsk will host most important events: a meeting of the Union State Council of Ministers and a session of the Supreme State Council. We have agreed with the president [of Russia] that we settle all outstanding issues by that time: both the issues in the remit of our Security Councils [the agreement on security guarantees] and in the remit of the governments,” the Belarusian leader emphasized.

Addressing Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko, the president pointed out: “In addition to the current agenda (recycling fee, localization of passenger cars, oil refining), you should keep an eye on the strategic tasks in terms of new industries and competencies for the Belarusian economy: aircraft building, microelectronics, machine tool building.” According to Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Russians are open for cooperation with Belarus, and there is an opportunity for the country to learn, along with space and nuclear energy, completely new competencies that are crucial for the future development of the state. “We have reserves in this direction: in aircraft building, microelectronics, and especially in machine-tool building,” the head of state emphasized.

The president noted that Russian enterprises have a very high interest in domestic engineering products, but in order to keep things this way it is important to invest now in improving technologies and mastering new, more advanced products. “We must move forward. Russians allocate funds for this. We just need to take a good use of this opportunity and grow,” Aleksandr Lukashenko instructed.

“You remember the agreements we reached with President Putin during his latest visit to Minsk. “Back then he said and I quote ‘Belarus should be an independent, self-sufficient country with a sustainable economic basis’,” the head of state said. Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Parkhomchik, new ministers and the ambassador to Russia will report on the status of economic interaction with Russia.

Aleksandr Lukashenko drew special attention of the participants of the meeting to the concrete results that the Union State have generated for ordinary people by its 25th anniversary landmark. The president recalled the assignment to the Standing Committee of the Union State to analyze all aspects regarding equal rights of citizens and urged to pay more attention to solving everyday problems that citizens of Belarus and Russia still face. This is what the Standing Committee under the leadership of Dmitry Mezentsev should be focused on, the president is convinced.

“A lot has been done, but the problems are still many,” the head of state said and named some of them: inspections at airports, roaming that has not been canceled so far, unavailability of rail tickets on holidays (due to lack of train services). “Who is responsible for solving these issues?” the president addressed the meeting. 

Aleksandr Lukashenko also touched upon the project to set up a media holding company of the Union State, noting that this work should be significantly intensified.