Meeting to discuss international issues

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko held a meeting to discuss international issues on 29 July.

At the beginning of the meeting, the head of state noted that the international agenda remains extremely intense. The schedule of international meetings has been quite busy lately. “All this requires utmost focus on the past and upcoming events,” the President said giving reasons to hold this meeting.

Aleksandr Lukashenko remarked that Belarus is doing the right thing by expanding cooperation with foreign countries and building long-term partnerships. At the same time, the President criticized the government for the lack of efficiency and persistence in implementing certain agreements reached at the highest level.

“Let's agree that the role of the President is to open a window of opportunities, to lay groundwork, to pave the way for agreements between members of the government and prime ministers. And the government (led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the supervision of the Belarus President Administration) must implement these agreements. Not to mention the arrangements reached by government members during their trips,” the head of state said outlining the tasks.

“There should be no tourist trips. No tourism. There must be a result,” Aleksandr Lukashenko emphasized. The purpose of the ongoing meeting, according to the President, is to compare notes, thrash out short-term plans to implement the agreements reached during visits to individual countries.

The President said as he commented on the talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the island of Valaam.

The President emphasized that his job is to build a solid foundation for relations with Russia, resolve both strategic matters and also tactical issues. The government is tasked with developing cooperation and negotiating on various aspects.

Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that there were three main issues that remained unresolved at the government level and that were discussed at the meeting with the Russian President: a new oil pricing formula, recycling fee and prepayment for oil. “As is usually the case, you have left some issues unresolved together with the Russian government: the oil formula (new pricing formula), the recycling fee and the prepayment for oil,” the President said as he addressed the participants of the meeting.

“We have discussed all these issues with President Putin. We have agreed that today or tomorrow (depending on how you prepare it) I will send him a written message, a letter, outlining our position on these three issues,” the head of state explained.

As for the prepayment for oil, which is mainly supplied to Belarus by Rosneft, the Russian President got even frustrated with this issue. “What kind of prepayment? We have been working without prepayment all our lives and we can continue to work this way,” the Belarusian leader shared the reaction of his Russian colleague. 

Security issues were central to the agenda of the talks. “These issues are not discussed in public,” the President noted. “All security, law enforcement and defense agencies and ministers are involved, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - on certain issues.”

“This is the essence of these negotiations. I emphasize once again: mutual understanding has been found on all issues. We are on board with each other on all issues,” the head of state summarized.

“In the autumn, in the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the Union State Treaty, Minsk will host most important events: a meeting of the Union State Council of Ministers and a session of the Supreme State Council. We have agreed with the President [of Russia] that we settle all outstanding issues by that time: both the issues in the remit of our Security Councils [the agreement on security guarantees] and in the remit of the governments,” the Belarusian leader emphasized.

Addressing Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko, the President pointed out: “In addition to the current agenda (recycling fee, localization of passenger cars, oil refining), you should keep an eye on the strategic tasks in terms of new industries and competencies for the Belarusian economy: aircraft building, microelectronics, machine tool building.” According to Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Russians are open for cooperation with Belarus, and there is an opportunity for the country to learn, along with space and nuclear energy, completely new competencies that are crucial for the future development of the state. “We have reserves in this direction: in aircraft building, microelectronics, and especially in machine-tool building,” the head of state emphasized.

The President noted that Russian enterprises have a very high interest in domestic engineering products, but in order to keep things this way it is important to invest now in improving technologies and mastering new, more advanced products. “We must move forward. Russians allocate funds for this. We just need to take a good use of this opportunity and grow,” Aleksandr Lukashenko instructed.

“You remember the agreements we reached with President Putin during his latest visit to Minsk. “Back then he said and I quote ‘Belarus should be an independent, self-sufficient country with a sustainable economic basis’,” the head of state said. Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Parkhomchik, new ministers and the ambassador to Russia will report on the status of economic interaction with Russia.

Aleksandr Lukashenko drew special attention of the participants of the meeting to the concrete results that the Union State have generated for ordinary people by its 25th anniversary landmark. The President recalled the assignment to the Standing Committee of the Union State to analyze all aspects regarding equal rights of citizens and urged to pay more attention to solving everyday problems that citizens of Belarus and Russia still face. This is what the Standing Committee under the leadership of Dmitry Mezentsev should be focused on, the President is convinced.

“A lot has been done, but the problems are still many,” the head of state said and named some of them: inspections at airports, roaming that has not been canceled so far, unavailability of rail tickets on holidays (due to lack of train services). “Who is responsible for solving these issues?” the President addressed the meeting. 

Aleksandr Lukashenko also touched upon the project to set up a media holding company of the Union State, noting that this work should be significantly intensified.

The head of state recalled that in July 2024 Belarus took part in the SCO summit in Astana in a new status - as a member of this organization. A number of bilateral meetings were held. “Those meetings were good. Specific agreements were reached there. Let’s bring them to fruition,” the Belarusian leader said.

“We must immediately draw a strategy to move towards the goals we have outlined. We should not waste time. Enormous prospects are opening up. First of all, additional opportunities to get access to a huge market of goods and services, to exchange expertise and knowledge, attract investments, diversify logistics and payments, reduce political risks. I set out all Belarusian initiatives in Astana,” the President said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko cited cooperation with Pakistan as an example. The head of state also held talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Astana. “The prime minister said directly: we are very interested, we need this... Please, come to us in Pakistan. We agreed that I will visit Pakistan somewhere at the end of the year. By that time, we need to arrive at certain preliminary arrangements. Pakistan has over 200 million people. What else do we need?” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

The head of state recalled that Belarus was invited to attend the upcoming BRICS summit in Kazan. This serious organization has the world’s power players in its ranks; BRICS member states account for more than 40% of the world’s population, the President noted. “We are interested in joining integration processes in this area. BRICS is one of props that can help us maintain balance and economic stability,” said Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The President instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to draft a plan for Belarus’ participation in this platform and its bilateral meetings.

South Africa is one of the members of BRICS; the Belarusian head of state believes that cooperation with this country holds a lot of promise. “Today, [Chairman of the Board of the National Bank Pavel] Kallaur briefed me about his trip to South Africa. I did not expect much from it given the foreign policy pursued by South Africa. Yet, this country turned out to be quite receptive and invited us to launch operations there. This is a developed, quite prosperous and advanced country,” the President said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko remarked that South Africa could be added to the list of Belarus' partners on the African continent. These include, for example, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria in the west of the continent, Kenya in the east, Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the south.

“We don't need to spread ourselves too thin across all continents. I want to reiterate: we don't have the kind of economy to have presence all over the world; we need to set priorities right and get laser focused on them,” the Belarusian leader emphasized.

Speaking about the BRICS summit, Aleksandr Lukashenko recalled the initiative of delegates of the Belarusian People's Congress to prepare an appeal for peace on behalf of the Congress and submit it to BRICS for consideration. “Study it and report back,” he said.

“Belarus is preparing to host a number of important visits. As you know, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Li Qiang will visit us soon. First Deputy Prime Minister Snopkov will report on the development of a negotiating position in follow-up to my agreements with China’s leader Xi Jinping,” the President noted.

“At the talks in Astana we did not discuss specific issues. We just outlined them,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted. “Xi Jinping suggested raising these matters at other levels. The prime minister’s visit is a good opportunity to resolve many issues that fall into his purview,” the Belarusian head of state noted.
He stated that so far the reports of the persons in chare are often all about the talk but some concrete cases are not solved. 

Aleksandr Lukashenko also recalled the most important visits by the government delegation to Latin America and the minister of foreign affairs to the DPRK. “Let's hear about the strategy,” he said.