MINSK, 26 July (BelTA) – Russia is a natural historical strategic partner of Belarus, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with Syria’s Al-Watan newspaper, BelTA has learnt.
“We have a multi-billion dollar trade turnover. We cooperate across numerous areas,” the President said.
According to him, the customs union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia opens up the prospects of even closer cooperation, if, of course, this union gets to grow into a full-fledged organization, without exceptions and restrictions. This is an extremely interesting project for the Syrian business who, in fact, gets an unhampered access to the 170-million market through Belarus,” Alexander Lukashenko
Developing strategic allied relations with Russia is Belarus’ conscious choice. Therefore while developing relations with other partners, “we have never acted to detriment of Russia and never will,” the Belarusian leader noted. “After all, we are one people with the common history” he added.
As for the relations with the European Union, they have recently started changing for the better. “The European Union is our neighbor with which we share a lengthy border. It is one of the main export destinations for Belarusian export, and an important partner across a range of areas of mutual interest – from science and technology to the fight against such challenges as illegal migration, trans-frontier crime. Certain progress in the relations with the EU does not mean the accents have been shifted. This is the result of the work towards the goal which we have declared earlier, namely, to pursue a multi-directed foreign policy. I think that the theme of our dialogue with the EU played a certain part in the deterioration of the Belarusian-Russian relations. And this is even more surprising as our Russian partners always urged us to take active effort to improve relations with the EU,” the President said.
“We see that Russian business have set their eyes on some desirable pieces of Belarusian property which belong to our people,” the head of state said. “Indeed, our long-term relations with Russia, our boundless faith in honesty and loyalty of our partner made us energy dependent on Russia, who until recently was our monopolistic supplier of hydrocarbon materials. Our partners have started using it as a leverage to push their interests in Belarus by applying the tools of economic blackmail for political purposes, using the instruments of an information war. But any dictate is not acceptable. I hope they will understand it in Moscow,” Alexander Lukashenko said.
Belarus has been an initiator and active supporter of integration. “Frankly, the Belarus-Russia Union State is still there because Belarus does its best to encourage the integration. We have supported the development of the customs union with Russia and Kazakhstan although we understand that it is more advantageous for Russia. So far Belarus has not had any benefits. “But we took this step in order to develop the idea of integration,” the Belarusian leader added.
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