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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's opening remarks at talks with Foreign Minister of Belarus Sergey Aleinik, Moscow, May 17, 2023

17 May 2023 12:53
940-17-05-2023

Mr Aleinik,

Friends,

We are glad to welcome you to Moscow. This is your first visit to the Russian Federation after taking the office of Foreign Minister of the Republic of Belarus.

We know that you have a busy agenda. Yesterday you met with Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko. With them, you discussed foreign political aspects of cooperation between our ministries and parliamentary structures. This is a useful practice. We are also trying to develop our dialogue with the Parliament of Belarus.

This morning you laid wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the Minsk - Hero City and Brest Fortress memorial stone. This symbolises the closest cooperation between us to defend the truth about World War II, the Great Patriotic War and to prevent the rewriting of history. The participation of our presidents, together with the leaders of other CIS countries, in the parade on Red Square on May 9 was visible evidence of this policy. Their regular contacts constantly underline the need to preserve the continuity of generations and ensure the right approaches among the younger generation. This is important now.

Today we have a busy agenda. Our countries are working on increasing the defence capacity on the western borders of the Union State, upholding justice in international relations, and asserting the inadmissibility of double standards in approaches to ensuring security in Europe. The security architecture on the European continent is being actively destroyed by our Western neighbours. All the more important is coordination on the foreign policy front, which we carry out on the basis of two-year plans.

Today we will see how the current plan is being implemented. In our opinion, it is successful. We will discuss the preparations for the joint Board meeting, which will take place in the autumn of 2023. There, we will have to adopt the next programme of joint foreign policy actions for a two-year period.

We will discuss the roles and tasks our ministries are facing in supporting the union state building, the implementation of the 28 union programmes, the provision of foreign political stewardship of the trade and economic cooperation, our actions at the UN, OSCE, CIS, CSTO, and EAEU, as well as the strengthening of the Union State as the core of integration processes in the post-Soviet space.