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Meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State

Vladimir Putin and President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko chaired a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State at the Kremlin.

April 6, 2023
16:00
The Kremlin, Moscow

The meeting's agenda included a review of the progress on the Guidelines for Implementing the Provisions of the Treaty Establishing the Union State in 2021-2023, a document that envisages joint work under 28 sectoral Union programmes.

The participants on the Russian side included members of the Supreme State Council - President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union State Mikhail Mishustin, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko and State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.

The attending Belarusian members of the Supreme State Council included President of the Republic of Belarus - Chairman of the Supreme State Council of the Union State Alexander Lukashenko, Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus Roman Golovchenko, Speaker of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of Belarus Natalya Kochanova and Speaker of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus Vladimir Andreichenko.

State Secretary of the Union State Dmitry Mezentsev represented the Standing Committee of the Union State.

The heads of several ministries and government agencies from both Russia and Belarus were also invited to the meeting.

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President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko: Friends,

We have long developed approaches and regulations in this regard, and agreed on them yesterday with President Putin, and I think you will agree to entrust me with chairing this meeting. However, as is traditional - we have always done it this way - Mr Putin, thank you for hosting this expanded format meeting today, and of course, I give you the floor for a word of welcome.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, friends, Mr Lukashenko,

I actually only have a few words to say. I would like to welcome everyone to Russia, to Moscow. You certainly feel at home here. We are working very closely together as part of the Union State. President Lukashenko, as Chairman of the Supreme State Council of the Union State, will moderate our work today. As your host, I just want to welcome you again, and wish you fruitful work.

Our governments and parliaments have worked hard to prepare our today's meeting. In fact, we have gathered only to record the results of your work. I would like to thank you for your effort and express hope that, if there are any issues that have not yet been agreed upon, although I don't see any, but if anything arises in the course of live discussion and hands-on work, we will certainly reach agreements and find solutions acceptable to both parties, a practice we have always used in our joint activities.

Thank you very much. Welcome.

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Vladimir Putin: Mr Lukashenko, colleagues,

Critically important issues concerning the development of integration in the economy, security and defence, as well as in the cultural and humanitarian sphere, were discussed at a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State today.

Yesterday, the President of Belarus and I held a substantive and constructive one-on-one meeting. Today, we reviewed in detail the state of affairs in the priority areas of building the Union State during a meeting with the participation of the heads of government and parliament and government officials supervising key areas of activity. I have no doubt that we will approve many major decisions aimed at further deepening the integration processes.

The commitment to step up activities across these areas and the entire range of cooperation is fully shared by public opinion, by the peoples of our countries. This was clearly demonstrated, in particular, during the recent celebration of the Day of Unity between the Peoples of Russia and Belarus.

I would like to emphasise that our countries are united by our traditional friendship and common cultural, spiritual and moral values which we use as a basis to build the Union State together.

We have accomplished a lot. Extensive, mutually beneficial trade and economic ties have been established, and cooperation in the defence, science and technology, education, culture and other areas has strengthened significantly. Acting in close coordination, the governments of our countries are working to ensure macroeconomic stability. Interaction in the currency, finance and monetary spheres is expanding.

We are jointly implementing comprehensive measures to mitigate the damage caused by illegitimate sanctions. We are strengthening our cooperation with foreign countries that are willing to work with us and want to continue this cooperation into the future.

The effectiveness of these joint efforts is confirmed by growing trade numbers. Russia firmly stands as Belarus' largest trade and economic partner. As a reminder, in 2021 trade grew 35 percent to US$40 billion and another 12 percent to a record high of US$45 billion in 2022. We discussed this yesterday. According to Belarusian statistics, it increased to US$50 billion, including services, as the President of Belarus said. Anyone involved in the economy understands that these are sizable figures for our countries.

At the same time, as the prime ministers noted during our discussion today, the volumes of supplies from both sides are balanced overall, which is a very good indicator of our work as well.

Significant achievements have been made in the integration of key industries. The 28 sectoral priority programmes approved at the previous Supreme State Council meeting in 2021 are making progress.

To date, both governments and the relevant agencies have completed 74 percent of the activities planned under those priority programmes, and, as we have seen, this work is yielding tangible results. We will certainly continue this without slowing down, as we agreed today.

The deputy prime ministers have reported on some of the integration efforts. For my part, I would like to specifically highlight the obvious progress in harmonising trade laws - the prime ministers spoke about this today. In particular, and I would like to emphasise this, the Union State has created a Unified Integrated System for Levying Indirect Taxes in accordance with the agreement signed in September 2022. This significantly simplified import and export operations, reduced business costs and expedited VAT refunds. All this is inducing the results that I just mentioned, and which we discussed today.

In December 2022, the Interstate Customs Centre was established as part of the Union State Customs Committee, an important body that prevents illegal import and export operations and blocks the movement of goods without paying excise and customs duties. All this makes our joint work much more transparent and efficient.

The work on a unified industrial policy is in full swing. President Lukashenko has been talking about this for years. We are moving towards the implementation of all these ideas. In December 2022, we enacted an intergovernmental agreement on the recognition of technological operations. This document, in particular, will enable Russian and Belarusian industrial enterprises to shift to common standards so major cooperation projects will progress more smoothly. We also discussed these issues last night. In some areas, such as agriculture equipment, work is progressing faster and it benefits industry in Russia and Belarus.

Russia and Belarus continue creating a unified oil and gas market. An agreement on the formation of a single electric power market is being prepared for signing.

Russia and Belarus are building up defence and security cooperation and will continue to do so, as was noted today, expanding cooperation in the military-technical sphere. This certainly meets the underlying interests of the two countries and our peoples and is truly important, given the complicated international situation.

The President of Belarus raised the issue of extending a number of previous agreements. I fully support this and ask our Security Council to review everything that the President of Belarus set today as a priority in this area.

The agenda item on the drafting of the Union State's Security Concept we discussed today is of great importance in this context. In this document, we need to lay out the fundamental tasks of interaction in conditions of growing tensions on the external borders of our states and the sanctions and information war that has been unleashed against us.

We should certainly deal in detail with strategic planning. We will continue strengthening the Union State's security system, thereby guaranteeing conditions for sustainable, steady socioeconomic development.

Another obvious achievement of our common effort is growing Russian-Belarusian ties in the cultural, humanitarian and education areas. Our countries are carrying out many interesting projects.

Thus, this autumn several cities in Belarus will host Days of Russian Culture and Days of Russian Cinema. A bilateral museum forum will take place in Minsk on May 11-12. We have an agreement on the participation of our countries' leading technical universities in the large education project, The Union State's School of Engineering Sciences. We know how important this is for both Belarus and Russia. As for professional education, we have always focused on this, and now it is even more important than before.

We also welcome the inclusion of the issues related to assistance for the students and education institutions of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics into the humanitarian agenda of the Union State's activities. We are grateful to the President of Belarus for supporting this undertaking and his willingness to fund this project from the common Union budget. If these are not humanitarian issues, what are? Education, assistance for children and young people is something we must always focus on.

In conclusion, I would like to express again my confidence that the decisions made today by the Supreme State Council will promote the further dynamic development of Russian-Belarusian integration, and the strengthening of the Union State's security and defence potential.

Thank you.

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