Mikhail Mishustin’s meeting with Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus Roman Golovchenko

The meeting was held on the sidelines of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting.

Excerpts from the transcript:

Mikhail Mishustin: Mr Golovchenko, friends,

I am delighted to see you in Yerevan, which will host a meeting of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council. I would like to use this occasion to convey best regards from President of Russia Vladimir Putin to President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

First, I would like to say that our governments are working actively to implement the instructions and agreements reached by our leaders. They were adopted at a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State of Russia and Belarus held in St Petersburg on 29 January. As part of this work, we are redoubling our efforts in all the main areas of the Union State Treaty implementation in the next three years.

Our focus is on strengthening our trade and economic cooperation. Our mutual trade has increased to 2.355 trillion Russian roubles or 85.5 billion Belarusian roubles in the first seven months of 2024.

We are strengthening the technological sovereignty of the Union State based on the 27 joint programmes and industrial cooperation projects. Mr Golovchenko, I would like to thank you for your active stand. I know that you visit our regions with a special focus on industrial cooperation.

We are actively promoting our humanitarian exchanges. On 25 September, we held the Union State Youth Forum in Minsk at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. In October, we will hold events dedicated to the preservation of the common history of Russia and Belarus.

It is noteworthy that the Union State of Russia and Belarus is driving integration in this format. We are coordinating new initiatives for our joint work dealing with the four EAEU freedoms, namely the free movement of goods, capital, services and labour.

Mr Golovchenko, with have a busy agenda, and I look forward to discussing the most pressing issues with you.

Roman Golovchenko: Mr Mishustin, colleagues,

It is indeed a great pleasure for me to start our work here in Yerevan with a bilateral meeting. This is logical and correct. The other day, Alexei Overchuk chaired a meeting of the High-Level Group of the Union State Council of Ministers. The agenda covered a plethora of items and many decisions were taken at that meeting, but as it usually happens, there are some outstanding issues which we need to focus on, in particular, in the context of the instructions which the presidents of Russia and Belarus issued to our governments during their meeting in Minsk in May 2024.

I fully share your views on the scale and volume of our trade and economic cooperation. You have provided absolute figures. Speaking in terms of percentage, our trade has grown by 8.5 percent in the period under review, which happened regardless of the fact that we witnessed a major increase in our trade last year. Despite the challenges we are facing, this shows that we have chosen a correct path, and that our cooperation in all spheres is producing a positive result.

You have also outlined, quite correctly, the areas we should focus on, namely, industrial cooperation, technological sovereignty and import substitution. Our organisations are working on these tasks at all levels, in particular, at the Ministry of Industry. We are implementing several joint programmes to replace imported components in both hardware and software as soon as possible. You are paying special attention to this, which is why we have actively joined in these efforts.

This year we will mark the 25^th anniversary of the Union State, which is an important date. I believe that we will be able to show good results for this event. As far as I know, our presidents have coordinated the date for a meeting of the Supreme State Council this year. In accordance with the tradition and procedure, we must hold a meeting of the Union State Council of Ministers before the Supreme State Council meeting to prepare the agenda and the topics to be discussed by the Supreme State Council.

Therefore, we are ready to discuss preparations for the upcoming Supreme State Council meeting and also the current trade, economic, humanitarian and other forms of cooperation between the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation.

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