Lukashenko arrives in Moscow for talks with Putin

The heads of state agreed on a new meeting during a telephone conversation on the evening of 5 February. Back then they discussed three blocks of issues of Belarus-Russia cooperation.

The first block concerned the general agenda of cooperation in economy, politics and security. In particular, the presidents discussed further actions within the framework of the Union State to ensure security of Belarus and Russia. The heads state scheduled a meeting to be held in the near future to discuss the implementation of the instructions given earlier. First of all, the instructions concerned import substitution and all the areas of anti-sanction cooperation. That was the second block of issues discussed by Aleksandr Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin over the phone. The third block deal with preparations for the Supreme State Council summit. The meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State is due to take place in February, and the Supreme State Council is tentatively scheduled for April and May. The meeting participants are expected to formalize the existing agreements and sign the relevant documents. The heads of state are set to discuss and clarify the entire range of current issues during their upcoming meeting.

The day before, in an interview with foreign and Belarusian journalists on 16 February, Aleksandr Lukashenko revealed some details of the upcoming meeting with his Russian counterpart. “We will discuss security and defense issues. Most importantly (I have already said that we are getting ready for the Supreme State Council meeting in April-May), we are set to discuss economic, military and political issues which are to be considered by the Supreme State Council. We want to see how the governments of Belarus and Russia are performing the tasks we have set. First of all, these are economic matters: energy, common market, import substitution, how they are financed and how they are implemented. It is a whole range of issues. Therefore, we are going to discuss all these issues. We might also discuss our joint military task force in Belarus,” said Aleksandr Lukashenko.

In turn, the Kremlin press service informed that the meeting is to consider key issues of Russia-Belarus strategic partnership and alliance, as well as integration cooperation within the framework of the Union State.