Lukashenko called the reunification of Belarus and Russia stupidity
The issue of the merger of Russia and Belarus is not on the agenda of the Union State in modern political conditions.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced this today at a meeting with security officials and the Prime Minister, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I respond to fabrications and lies in different channels. When we approached the results of negotiations within the Union State in an absolutely friendly atmosphere, I said how we see it. We, Belarusians, live in our own apartment. She is not big. And huge Russia lives not in an apartment, but on the entire floor. And we are a sovereign and independent state.
Today the world has changed so much that there is talk that Belarus should become part of Russia, or Russia should become part of Belarus, or we should somehow merge, creating single governing bodies...
The world has changed so much that it would be foolish to even work in this direction . And secondly, it's absolutely unnecessary. Because, existing as a sovereign, independent state, we can build a system of relations that will be more powerful than the relations between individual territories within the Russian Federation itself. Russia is vast, comprising a seventh of the planet's land area, and here we are close, with practically the same level of development, both technological and technical. If we want, we can build such a system of relations," Lukashenko said.
According to him, the rapprochement of the tax systems of the two states was discussed in Sochi.
“The main thing is that this is transparent for both Belarus and Russia. So that there are no omissions here, so that this does not cause any suspicion. Putin tells me: “I’m ready to send Mishustin to you. Your government, our government, tax officials will sit down and report to you the essence of the proposals of the Russian Federation after we have been working for about a month.” I agreed. Please, come and sit down together and look at Russian innovations. If these are truly innovations, if they are for the benefit of Belarus, we will accept it. As Putin said, if this is not suitable, we will not work in any direction. His proposal was: let's do what we can accept today. What's wrong with that? I don’t see anything wrong with this,” Lukashenko is quoted as saying by his official website.
Another area of cooperation will be aviation, taking into account the fact that a medium-haul airliner has been created in Russia.
“And I told him in Sochi that we moved such a plant from the center of Minsk and built it. And we are ready not only to service these aircraft, which are produced in Russia, but also to produce some components and components. That is, to carry out closer cooperation. This is beneficial for us,” Lukashenko said.
The proposal from the Belarusian side in the financial sector concerned the possible participation of Gazprom in the modernization of Grodno Azot.
“Maybe they will be interested in it. If it doesn’t, we will build this plant ourselves. We need it: the demand for nitrogen fertilizers in the world is very decent. Nitrogen from natural gas - if Gazprom is interested, we can agree with them on construction,” Lukashenko said.
According to him, joint opposition to Western sanctions was also discussed.
“We want to build such relationships so that we are not afraid and do not twitch about any sanctions. Yesterday sanctions were introduced against Russia, and the day before yesterday - against Belarus. And there’s already some kind of hubbub. Listen, we can’t feed 150 million people in such a territory? Easily! In this vein, we analyzed the situation in all industries. And we came to the conclusion that we need to start doing this. We just need to plan, like the Chinese and Japanese do. To the extent possible, plan our further actions in the economy,” Lukashenko said.
At the same time, he once again emphasized that Belarus will not give up multi-vector, since Russia is not ready to buy all of its exports.
“How can we not provide this vector? But at the same time, we say that Russia is unshakable, this is the main direction in which we are ready to move,” Lukashenko said.
Lukashenko called the reunification of Belarus and Russia stupid.