Governor: Peoples of Belarus, Russia are committed to independent path of development

He noted that the Kaliningrad delegation began its visit to Minsk with laying flowers at the Victory Monument. 

"This is a symbol of our common memory of the feat of our fraternal peoples in the fight against Nazism during the Great Patriotic War. Most recently, on 9 May, you, together with our President Vladimir Putin, celebrated Victory Day on Red Square in Moscow," the governor said addressing Aleksandr Lukashenko. "It is very important for us to remember and honor our common history, especially today."

"You, Aleksandr Grigorievich, talked about the unfriendly actions on the part of the United States and the European Union. However hard they try, they will not be able to break, change our memory. They will not be able to break our determination to choose the development paths of our countries, our peoples," Anton Alikhanov said. “You mentioned the things that happened to transit, which is, of course, an insult to the WTO rules and international agreements in general. Let me remind you: when the Baltic states joined the EU, they gave legal guarantees that Kaliningrad transit would be ensured and there would be no obstacles to this. 

"Last year, the transit was stopped almost completely due to the sanctions. But thanks to the efforts of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the President Administration we were able to recover a significant amount. We still transport agricultural and a number of other products by road. Rail transport is still used quite actively. We redirected part of the commodity flows to ports in Leningrad Oblast, St. Petersburg,” the governor said. “Belarusian goods are actively transported by sea. By the decision of the president, the government has allocated RUB3.8 billion this year alone to subsidize this sea transportation so that it does not become much more expensive than rail transportation.”