According to Natalia Eismont, Press Secretary to the President of the Republic of Belarus, the heads of state scheduled this meeting back in a telephone conversation on July 1, and one of the reasons for holding it and shaping the agenda was the letter from the President of Belarus to the President of Russia concerning economy and finance, as well as opposition to the sanctions policy of the collective West against Belarus and Russia. The Presidents needed to discuss a plan of joint actions, and during their telephone conversation, President Putin proposed to meet in St. Petersburg. It was said and done. The collective West and their media agents are very much dissatisfied with the volume and quality of decisions that put all the sanctions into the category of "trash", speaking the language of serious investors. Governments were instructed to finalize and adopt a general plan of counter-sanctions. For Belarus, this means the removal of remaining barriers to exports, the widest possible access to government procurement, liquidity support for banks, and uninterrupted supply of raw materials, including crude oil. Our economy has already responded in spite of "external viruses, including sanctions" (the term, by the way, was introduced by Vladimir Vladimir Putin). The GDP for the half year grew by 3.3% including inflation, this is much higher than expected by the government. Plus, the Belarusian ruble is slowly but surely strengthening against the basket of imported currencies. The solution that keeps the markets optimistic is that the gas prices next year will not be higher than the current one. Experts have assessed it. The second direction is security. They have already mentioned Central Asia and the entry of the Taliban onto the borders of our allies. But there are also terrorism and cyber attacks, NATO's crawling into Ukraine, and aggressive outbursts by the Baltic States and Poland.
Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus: "They have moved to the next stage of the insurgency to individual terror, virtually every day against our people, journalists with a state position, deputies, one of the leaders of the parliamentary corps. And they attacked when the children were at home - the goal is to intimidate. All of them will be found out and punished".
The first decision was to close the border with Ukraine for militants and weapons - Belarus and Russia have detained several dozen extremists with weapons and explosives. An attempted terrorist attack in Vileika, a Russian naval facility on our territory, was successfully prevented. Another issue is preparation for the West 2021 exercise. Judging by how nervous the NATO functionaries are, they estimate our defense system very highly. There's an important nuance. The President of Belarus underscored the role of NCOs, in fact, foreign agents, in our deep rear. 1.5 thousand structures, whose main purpose is to manipulate consciousness, recruit activists for unrest, impose their agenda and break the state. Belarus does not intend to wait for the scenario of Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia or Syria. Many NGOs have already been shown the door, and some of the most aggressive ones were inspected this week. For reference, in the USA such "foreign agents" can get up to 5 years in prison and $10 thousand fine for each. The third block of questions is traditional - integration. Here, the work on the union programs on taxes and customs was completed. A landmark step: Russia will compensate Belarus for the lost revenues of oil refining as a result of the so-called "tax maneuver". They argued about it for a long time, but reached an agreement. This is also the preparation for the Supreme State Council of the Union State.
Union trends - 2021. Results of St. Petersburg meeting of Belarusian and Russian leaders
18 июля 2021












