Lukashenka On Integration With Russia: We Agreed With President Putin

The dictator met with the state secretary of the “union state”.

Belarus and Russia should build allied relations in strict accordance with the provisions on the creation of a “union state”. This was announced on Tuesday by Lukashenka, as he met with the state secretary of the “union state” Grigory Rapota, reports TASS.

“The thing is that that President Putin and I agreed that we will not destroy the treaty. If we start doing it, we will ruin everything that has been created throughout the time,” the dictator has noted.

Belarus and Russia do not discuss the possibility of uniting into one state, the parties should go step by step in the development of integration processes, Lukashenka said.

“It makes absolutely no sense today. It makes no sense even to talk about this thing [the unification of the two countries]. We decided to move step by step in order to implement the provisions of the Union State treaty,” Lukashenka added.

“Of course, there are big issues of great importance, and we decided to incorporate them in the Union State program of action. But we also have other pending issues, and if we do not address them, it will be useless to speak about any integration and programs,” the Belarusian ruler told.

According to Lukashenka, by the decision of the Rosselkhoznadzor, supplies of about 80 Belarusian enterprises to the Russian Federation are banned. “If we are building relations with each other this way, then what kind of common currency and unification of states can we talk about? This simply should not be in relations between the two states,” he believes.

According to him, this also applies to ensuring free access to the state order in Russia, industrial cooperation.

“Or the tax maneuver, which was thrown instead of customs duties, on which we agreed that they should not even be in the EAEU, let alone the Union State,” Lukashenka said.

He also stated that “the deadline for negotiations on the supply of natural gas and oil [to Belarus] for the future had already expired”. “A lot of questions haven’t been solved. We agreed that while solving strategic issues, we will simultaneously solve tactical issues that are on the surface and cry out,” the dictator noted. “Without solving these issues, there’s nothing even to talk about, on our side,” the ruler concluded.

Lukashenka noted that the result of the group’s work so far are “just promises”. “The negotiating group ran into some kind of question, the government promises, including Prime Minister Medvedev, to give commands and orders to resolve issues in a complex,” Lukashenka said.

“They promised - they forgot, the they promised again - they forgot,” he said.

The Belarusian ruler also stated that there are no concrete results in the work of the Belarusian-Russian intergovernmental working group on integration issues.

“There is an incomprehensible delay of these processes. Tomorrow [July 17-18] we will meet with the Russian president in St. Petersburg and discuss the results of these negotiations (of the working group). And there is nothing to discuss today,” the dictator noted.

Lukashenka asked Rapota to take the matter under control, so that in a few days the concrete results of the group’s work would be obtained for a substantive discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Just meet and sit in front of each other, without saying anything - I think these times have already passed,” Lukashenka believes.