Northern Europe, as far south as northern Italy, is now in the grip of a wave of icy cold (no doubt, the result of global warming). As a result, observers are expecting the Russian winter offensive in the Ukraine to start all the sooner, though nobody knows when. This month or next? Maybe a dramatic entry from Belarus, cutting off NATO supplies? Nobody knows. For the moment, Allied forces are content to grind down the undersupplied and freezing Kiev regime conscripts and mercenaries in situ, hoping that perhaps they will simply surrender en masse, despite the regime’s guns poking in their backs. Conditions are such that this could happen with very few Russian losses. There is no hurry. Over 500,000 Allied soldiers and 500 winter camouflage tanks are waiting for their moment to move in and denazify the Ukraine. They will wait for the right moment.
Introduction: The Liberation of Europe
Russia could no longer allow a hostile, US-controlled, NATO-armed and soon-to-be-nuclear Ukraine to exist. Therefore, it is being liberated. It should have happened long before, but Russia was much too weak to do so before. When the Zelensky regime falls, billions of dollars of Western arms and supplies will fall into Russian hands. The Kiev regime’s Western-incurred indebtedness to the West for arms and supplies over the last nearly nine years will be cancelled. US-exploited Kiev regime territory, 40% of the whole, will be taken back without compensation. This will be a small measure of compensation for the destruction that the US and its European vassals, including the Minsk I and Minsk II liars of Germany and France, have caused in the Ukraine, especially in the much-tried Donbass.
Apart from completing the liberation of the four provinces that it has taken back so far, Russia may also take back four more Russian-speaking provinces, those of Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa, so joining up with Russian Transdnestria. A coup in Kiev could take place, as the remnants of the Kiev Army collapse and the new Ukraine could then even become a Russian ally, like Belarus, part of the Union State. Whether the five far western provinces of the present Ukraine remain with the new Ukraine, or three of them return to Poland, and one each to Hungary and Romania, remains to be seen. It will all depend on what Russia allows. After this, the whole fragile Western European domino set, hastily stood up by the US-run NATO and its political wing the EU, could begin to tumble. Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, the last three liberated from NATO and the EU, could be offered cheap gas, like NATO-tormented Serbia, with Montenegro and Macedonia. With their US puppet elites removed by their peoples, all these countries could become allies of Russia, recovering their independence after EU serfdom and NATO oppression.
We recall that the old Soviet ‘Eastern bloc’ failed precisely because, like the EU, it took away the independence of such nations. However, the centralising straitjacket of the Soviet world has gone and it will not come back. The same alliance with Russia, but keeping independence, could eventually take place in NATO-, EU- and US-elite-freed Greece and Cyprus. Then the three Baltics and even Finland could also become Russian allies, like the new Ukraine, energy supplied by Russia, their Russian minorities at last granted basic human rights. After this, first Austria, Italy, Germany and then the other countries in Western Europe will have to take important decisions about their futures: survival by negotiation with Moscow, or slow national suicide? The choice may seem obvious, but it must be their choice. Let us look at the current tendencies in the three main countries of Western Europe, Germany, France and the UK, to gauge what direction we may well be heading in.
Germany: The Struggle to Restore Your Own Country
On 7 December the German media announced the arrest of twenty-five ‘far-right extremists’ for plotting to overthrow the Federal government. Translated, this means that the US-run German government arrested twenty-five patriots who wanted to restore freedom in Germany. Interestingly, these patriots included a member of German royalty and a former member of the German Parliament or Bundestag. In a statement, the German federal prosecutor’s office stated that an estimated fifty people were suspected of being a ‘violent’ part of a broad-based movement called ‘Citizens of the Empire’ (Reichsbürger), with a total membership of 12,000. In any other country, there would be no problem with the existence of patriotism. But in US-run Germany, any patriotic movement is instantly dubbed ‘Neo-Nazi’, ‘pro-Hitler’ or ‘anti-democratic’, which is just propaganda code for pro-sovereignty, pro-German and pro-freedom.
The arrested were intending to overthrow the Federal puppet government which must swear allegiance to the US, and replace it with an independent German government. The freedom-fighters reject the US-imposed institutions of Woke-Fascist Federal Germany (there is nothing so intolerant as liberalism). German prosecutors named Heinrich XIII, Prince Reuss, a descendant of the House of Reuss, former rulers of parts of eastern Germany, as one of the group’s leaders. Interestingly, it was said that Prince Heinrich had sought (but not obtained) the involvement of Russian representatives in the alleged scheme. Another suspect is Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who was a member of the Bundestag, representing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party, from 2017 to 2021. Since the beginning of this year, she had been working as a judge in the Berlin District court.
In 2017 the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party became the first patriotic party to win seats in the Germany Parliament for nearly 60 years. This so upset the German serfs of the pyramid scheme run by the feudal US con-tricksters that in March 2021 the Party was placed under surveillance by the Germany secret service for trying to liberate Germany from American tutelage. Although the resistance movement has been defeated for now, we feel that though this is a lost battle, it is not a lost war. More battles will come, as German patriots struggling to decolonise their country and seek to find and eventually find freedom. Germany is Western Europe’s largest and strongest nation and also its barometer. When all is well there, all goes well elsewhere, all falls into place. Can Germany at last throw off the US yoke, expelling foreign troops, commemorating the 500,000 victims of the Anglo-American bomb genocide of German civilians of 1940-1945 and perhaps eventually become a Royal Confederation of Sovereign German States? It has to come. Freedom beckons.
France: The Revolt of the People
France was where Absolutism was invented with Louis XIV (+ 1715), ‘the Sun King’. He is alleged to have said, ‘l’Etat, c’est moi’ – ‘The State is me’, with the result that a bloody Revolution was born in France. For extremes always breed extremes and so the French Revolution bred the absolutist Emperor Napoleon. Since then, France has been ruled by absolutists, president-kings or president-emperors. Their slogan ‘the State is me’, although still true, has meant that each has only had the right to absolute power for a few years (the only fruit of the Revolution – a shortened and not a lifetime or hereditary period in power). Since 1944, after a long series of corrupt post-war governments, of which De Gaulle’s was by far the least noxious, because De Gaulle actually loved France more than money (just as Putin loves Russia more than money), it is now Macron, the Rothschild candidate, who is the current King of France. France is in effect ruled by a President by Divine right and Macron is known as ‘the Pharoah’. However, he is not the first Pharoah, as Mitterrand (1916-1996), who lived in the Presidential palace, his wife in one wing and his favourite mistress in the other, was the first. He even built a masonic pyramid of 666 panes of glass, providing the entry into the Temple of Knowledge, the Louvre Palace.
From last year I remember a conversation with a Paris taxi driver, when I had to get to the old Russian Cathedral quickly with heavy suitcases. The taxi-driver was a typical French African, from Cameroun. Seeing that I was a priest, in no uncertain terms he told me colourfully with his African-French accent how the hated Macron was either a fag, ‘un pédé’, or else he had a pretty young thing on the side. After all, how could a normal man go to bed with a woman twenty-five years older than himself? (Macron married one of his schoolteachers, nearly the same age as his mother; some say the ueber-botoxed lady in question should be tried for female pedophilia, since Macron is said to have been under age when they first conjoined). The African driver’s views on covid and French State compulsory vaccination were just as forthright as his views on gays. I quote him because his view of the world displays the very serious disconnect between the sophisticate Macron-style elite and the actual French grassroots. Actually, he sounded just like a Moscow taxi-driver.
Et justement (I don’t know how you say that in English), Macron is opposed by the people, protesting as the Yellow Vests, the popular but brutalised French Resistance. The French elite is fearful because the French people are revolt-prone (frondeurs). This is why the French State has a permanent special force of riot-police (the C.R.S., founded in 1944 and directly replacing the SS, for long retaining much the same management and much the same uniform) to suppress the revolts of ‘the peasants’. On top of that, the French State is fearful because at the last French election in April 2022 a nationalist government under Marine Le Pen could have got elected. This would have challenged not just the whole French State, but also the EU bureaucratic machine, which largely depends on the French model. If the French people defeat the French elite, the EU bureaucracy knows that the French people will come to power and that since the French are against the EU, then the whole Brussels fantasy will fall. (And the bureaucrats will lose their handsomely-paid jobs plus privileges and generous pensions). It is the whole top-down French and EU Establishment ideology which is being challenged in France. Who will win? I don’t know, but there is only one phrase to describe the situation: Fragile for the elite.
The UK: Disunity Before Freedom
The UK finds itself in a far more precarious position even than Germany and France. The latter have only been forced to support the US for three generations. Until that they were independent. However, the British elite was at the origin of the American evil, and consciously and forcefully cultivated it from 1914 on and still does so. The fact that the US/UK language is basically the same language means that the Americans have immense power in the UK, even to the extent that the modern English language is littered with unconscious Americanisms. A lot of British people are nearly as obese as a lot of Americans, dress like Americans and their children sing American songs with an American accent. The nearly 60 million people who live in the remnants of the real England are on the verge of losing their identity. The notorious Establishment BBC mouthpiece and the State-supporting British tabloids manipulate the uneducated minds of tens of millions. Many are so brainwashed that as a result there is no opposition movement to the British Establishment, no parallel to the French ‘Yellow Vests’.
The problem is that a majority of UK citizens, especially in England, have over the centuries been ‘Establishmentised’, that is, co-opted onto the anti-English British Establishment and made to feel the advantages (?) in terms of finance and prestige of being on the British side. With the British Establishment side become a poodle to the American elite, UK citizens are now being Americanised and made to feel the advantages (?) in terms of finance and prestige of being on the American side. They have been so passivised that many Continental Europeans ask if, instead of blood, the British have tea in their veins. However, in 2022 more and more have come to see that the ‘advantages’ of being on the British/American side are remarkably thin. All the more so, as the divisive Brexit did not bring the restoration of sovereignty and recovery of borders, as promised by the New-York born Johnson, but instead brought the UK the honorary feudal position of being the 51st State of the USA. A broad-based national resistance movement has yet to appear in England. However, there is hope on the Celtic fringe. Certainly, in Scotland, North Wales and parts of Ireland, there is resistance through their national parties, the Scottish National and Welsh National Parties and Sinn Fein in Ireland, though are all seriously undermined by Wokeism.
The British Establishment-invented United Kingdom is today a Disunited Kingdom (DK). Quite soon, probably within a generation, there will be four independent countries in the Isles of the North Atlantic (IONA): England, (a reunited) Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For it is precisely in untieing the sinister tangle of knots that form the present imposed ‘unity’ and the coming of disunity that real unity may come. This will not be a political unity, but a unity of interest. The Four to-be Sovereign Nations of the British Isles and Ireland have a great deal in common in terms of shared geography, history and culture. Sadly, all that they have in common has been overshadowed by the oppressive, centralised State Establishment. This has been fixed in the Norman-British capital of London with its all-powerful Zionist City, for nearly a thousand years. This oppression is symbolised by the foreign Royal Family. The English lost their own Royal Family and the rest of the national elite after the last English King of England, Edmund Ironside, was murdered in 1016. Since then the monarchs have all been foreigners – Danish, Norman, French, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch, German. None has had the interests of the Four Nations at heart, because all have been aliens, many of whom could not even speak English and whose hearts have been elsewhere. Nevertheless, the hope for a serious search for identity and then a real national awakening in England and the Three Nations remains.
Conclusion: The Long Walk to Freedom
The battles for freedom from oppression in the three most powerful and populous countries of Western Europe, two in Continental Europe, one an offshore archipelago, a bit like Americanised Japan on the other side of Northern Eurasia, are under way. For the moment the huge weight of centuries-old oppression, suppression and repression would seem to make the victory of their zombified peoples in any of those battles impossible. And yet it seems to us that, ironically, it is precisely that weight which oppresses the peoples in the three quite different contexts that will ensure victory. Too much is too much – the revolts of peoples whose national identities have been oppressed, suppressed and repressed so heavily and for so long are coming. The sovereignty of Germany, France and the Four Nations has to be restored and the minorities who have realised it in each of them are growing. More and more are realising that restoration can only come once they have freed themselves from the elites which feed off one another. And those elites depend entirely on the alien US elite, which stands behind them all and pulls all their strings.
Today the UK is strike-bound as a result of salaries not keeping up with record-high inflation, which has been almost wholly caused by the anti-Russian and anti-freedom ‘sanctions’ imposed by the Establishment elite. Some there say that the UK event of 2022, the death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 96, was the result of her meeting Liz Truss two days earlier and realising what her country had come to. (A popular UK joke says that there is now proof that nobody is brainless – Liz Truss is the exception that proves the rule). Elizabeth’s son, King Charles, has had eggs thrown at him. (Remember how he cheated on Diana?). No-one, even the most devoted Republican, would ever have contemplated throwing eggs at his mother. Then there is the scandalous Harry, Duke of California, completely besotted by and under the heel of his American actress wife, who apparently is ‘black’. (Are the wokeists who call this woman, who appears to be a sun-tanned white woman, ‘black’ perhaps simply colour-blind?). Perhaps, just as France declares a new Republic whenever it undergoes a serious crisis (it is now on its Fifth), the UK, or rather England, as that is what it is actually about, will yet declare that it has a new Dynasty, which is what happens there whenever it has a serious crisis. In any case, Queen Elizabeth II was definitely the end of something: Goodbye, House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor? Hello, English Royal House – Ironside II?
The Franco-German tandem which has essentially been running Continental Western Europe since the Schumann Declaration in 1950 is in trouble too. Sovereignist Germany wants to be Germany again and Sovereignist France wants to be France again. It is the power-grasping US that will not allow either. However, once the US has been discredited by losing its war in the Ukraine, then all will become possible in Europe, just as all became possible in Asia, once the US had been thrown out of it. (There the US now holds on only to the occupied coastal strip of Palestine, the southern tip of the Korean peninsula and offshore Japan, Taiwan and Singapore). We are heading towards a new Western Europe, true, not in a straight line, but in the tortuous zigzags of lies of such grandchildren of Nazis as Ursula von der Luegen. What Germany and France end up doing will pattern and determine the actions of all Western Europe, that is of the EU 27 plus the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, the European 31. It is our contention that a settlement with Russia, forming the Moscow-Berlin-Paris-London axis, which is what should have happened in 1914, is the only thing that can save the European 31 from serfdom to US feudalism. Now, the Kiev regime has a political slogan: ‘The Ukraine is Europe’. This is meaningless, as Russia is also Europe and there is no Non-Russian Europe without Russian-speaking Europe. They are two halves of a whole, each with a similar area of some five million square kilometres. The European 31 has a choice to make: Live under the transatlantic jackboot, stamped on its face from 3,000 miles away, or choose liberation and sovereignty. The latter means living as good neighbours with local, Russian-speaking Europe and the rest of Eurasia, where geographically, historically and culturally Europe already is and always has been.
Thank you very much for coming here, to the Russian Far East, to a project that is still under construction but is already working, our new Vostochny Cosmodrome. You have seen the scale of the project.
It is symbolic that we are meeting here on April 12, Cosmonautics Day, because very many things in the life of the former Soviet Union, in our lives and in the life of our generations, are associated with that day, April 12, 1961. It was a day of triumph for the Soviet Union, the day of the first man in space, the first manned flight. It is pleasant that we are talking about continuing our cooperation today, under new conditions, based on the achievements reached in the previous decades and the latest best practices.
I am referring to the creation of a new satellite for high-resolution remote sensing of the Earth and our future joint project on plasma engine, which we can make use of; it is a highly promising area. Of course, there is also the construction of the cosmodrome – we need good construction professionals, with high competencies and good technologies. Thanks to your efforts, Belarus has not only preserved all these resources but is actively developing them, and we can use them to address our common goals, which will undoubtedly boost the development of our economies and high technologies in our countries.
Of course, I would like to use this occasion, our meeting today, to talk about our continued cooperation in the spheres we have outlined for the further development of the Union State. There is still much to do.
Despite the so-called external pressure, our economic relations are growing successfully. Our trade has reached nearly US$40 billion or more precisely US$38 billion, which is a very good indicator. Belarus is one of Russia’s leading trade partners.
Moreover, the current circumstances and external pressure offer us new opportunities to make use of all our potential capabilities to support each other and to provide unconditional support to our development, including in such high-tech spheres as space exploration.
This is in addition to [our cooperation in] agriculture and industry. We have done a great deal over the past years to boost our cooperation. Essentially, we have opened up our market to Belarusian goods. I believe that it is a very good pillar of cooperation on both sides.
I would also like to mention our cooperation in energy, including nuclear energy (we are completing a major project in Belarus) and hydrocarbons, that is, oil and gas. There are issues we need to consider and discuss, including industry, and not only the production of agricultural equipment but also many other branches, mechanical engineering, namely heavy machine building.
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Throughout history, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia were intertwined with a set of solid cultural, political, and economic links, to the point that the division did not appear more than mere administrative under Soviet jurisdiction. But it all changed after the collapse of the Union.
Escalation between the West and Russia
Today, under Joe Biden’s neoconservative and ultra-globalist administration, relations between Russia and the United States are so strained that humanity is on the verge not of a Cold War (which has long been ongoing), but of a nuclear war, World War III. The main stumbling block is Ukraine. To foreign observers, the conflict between the two kindred Eastern Slavic Orthodox peoples, who have a common ancestry from Kievan Rus’, is something strange and incomprehensible. It suggests itself that a third force has a hand in this conflict – that is, the same Americans, who have tried to set the two brotherly peoples against each other, and by supporting one of the sides – Ukraine – to strike a blow to Russia, which is returning to history thanks to the patriotic reforms of President Putin.
There are several factors in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine that are not entirely obvious to the outside observer.
Ukraine never existed
The first misconception is to present the conflict as a confrontation between two states. The Western press and politicians present everything as if Ukraine is a separate country with its own long history, which Bolsheviks forcibly annexed to the USSR in the 1920s, and when the communist regime collapsed, Ukraine immediately regained its independence. This has nothing to do with reality at all.
Kievan Rus’ and fragmentation: the origins of the three branches of the Eastern Slavs
The Russian state emerged in the ninth century in the north of Russia – in Novgorod, but in a short time, its capital was transferred to Kiev. Hence the name Kievan Rus. Its population consisted mainly of eastern Slavs with a significant percentage of the Finno-Ugric population in the north and northeast and Turkic in the south and southeast.
Quite soon the uniform state was divided into some almost independent areas – Princedoms.
In the west main the principalities were Galicia and Volhyn’.
In the east Vladimir (later Moscow) began to gain power.
In the northwest, the Principality of Polotsk came under Lithuanian influence and became the basis of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Russian East and Russian West
Between the east and west of Russia in the Middle Ages, there was a tense opposition for a grand-ducal throne, which Vladimir’s princes finally managed to seize. Under Andrei Bogolyubsky (XII) the capital of all Rus’ was moved to Vladimir, and later the capital of the great princes became the residence of Moscow, located in the east of Rus’. Kiev was abandoned and almost forgotten living only in legend.
That’s when in the epoch of fragmentation in XII century the united people of Kievan Rus’ – east Slavs – split up into three branches – southwest, northwest and east. Later they were called, respectively, Malorossy (Little Russians or Ukrainians), Byelorussy (White Russians ) and Velikorossy(Great Russians, the east of Russia was called Velikorossia, Great Russia).
Their fates were different. During Mongol invasion, Velikorossy and Malorossy have entered under authority of Mongolian khans, but Velikorossy under the direction of the great Princes recognized by Horde, have conserved full scale Orthodox Christianity (with Metropolitan at the head of Church) and certain degree of sovereignty. The Little Russians (Malorossy), on the other hand, found themselves divided between Lithuania, Poland and Austro-Hungaria, and their religious identity was strongly influenced by Western Catholicism. The Belorussy (White Russians), on the other hand, became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was relatively independent from the Golden Horde.
Rise of Velikorossia (Great Russia)
As the centuries passed and after the fall of the Golden Horde, Moscow began to turn into a powerful regional power. Lithuania was united with Poland and came under the authority of the Catholics. And the Little Russians (aka Ukrainians) found themselves in the position of subordinate classes, partly under the Poles, partly as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The southern regions of the former Kievan Rus’ first came under the rule of the Crimean Tatars, and then have annexed together with Crimea by the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Hence the name Ukraine, i.e., Okraina, what means “a peripheral territory” without any independence and divided between different states. At the same time the nucleus of Little Russians (Ukrainians) preserved Orthodoxy and the old East Slavic traditions.
As Moscow’s power grew, the Velikorossy (Great Russians) began to force the Poles and the Turks, seizing their possessions in the former Kievan Rus’ space and adding them to their growing Empire. First of all the lands of Novorossia (New Russia) from Kharkov to Odessa and finally Crimea were conquered from the Ottoman Empire. These territories were populated either by natives of Great Russia or by Moscow-friendly Cossacks, both of Little Russia (Ukraine) and those that had spread to the south of the Russian Empire itself. Novorossia (New Russia) became an integral part of the Russian Empire. Later, other regions of Ukraine, this time populated primarily by the Ukrainians themselves and the Malorussian Cossacks, were also recaptured from the Poles. The same happened in the northwest with Belorussia. These lands also became part of the Russian Tsarist Empire.
Breakup of the Empire
The breakup of the Russian Empire in 1917-1921 led to various nations declaring independence from Moscow. But the Bolsheviks gradually returned most of the territories – except Poland, Finland, and the three Baltic republics – to Moscow’s power (Baltic states were reintegrated later by Stalin after WWII) . Ukraine and Belorussia in a completely arbitrary and purely administrative boundaries became an integral part of the USSR. The USSR was created from above as a unitary state with a communist ideology. Prior to the Soviet Union, neither Ukraine nor Belorussia existed as separate States, unless you consider the medieval principality of Galicia-Volhynia and Polotsk.
Collapse of the Soviet Union
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the ex Soviet Union Republics, and in fact all the same administrative provinces of the Russian Empire, called “republics” in the Soviet period, declared their independence from Moscow under the influence of corrupt elites and with the direct support of the capitalist West. Since the same kind of pro-Western reformers were in charge in Moscow starting with Yeltsin and in the 90’s, they easily recognized the new entities within the very – completely artificial – borders they had in the USSR. In the USSR, the borders themselves had no meaning and were drawn only for the convenience of administrative management (as districts of one and the same city).
So in place of the single State of the USSR, which emerged in place of another single State of the Russian Empire, that gathered all these lands and peoples together, there were 17 new – almost never existed – at least in such borders, and most of them did not exist at all – “States” (failed from the very birth). Some of them remained loyal to Moscow. Another fell under the influence of the West, and took a harshly anti-Russian line. Alas, Ukraine belongs to this second category.
Two Ukrainians (or more)
The territory of the new political entity “Ukraine,” which emerged in 1991, consists of completely heterogeneous territories and peoples.
Eastern Ukraine (from Odessa to Kharkov through the Donbass) or Novorossia is populated by virtually the same people as the southeast of modern Russia. These lands, as we have seen, were taken from the Turks by the Russian Empire (much of it under Catherine the Great) and repopulated by Russians (Great Russians, Velikorossy). The same applies to the Crimea.
The western regions of Ukraine — right-bank Ukraine, if you look at the map along the Dnieper River — had been under Catholic Polish and Austro-Hungarian rule for many centuries and had no statehood at all. Being Orthodox and predominantly peasants, they were considered by the Catholic nobility as inferior people. However, not all of them were happy to meet Great Russians as liberators. Part of Little Russians (Ukrainians) tried to assert their identity, of course, different from the culture of the Moscow Tsardom and the Great Russian Empire. It was from such dissenters that Ukrainian nationalism and even the Ukrainian language itself began to be formed under strong influence of Poles and the West in general – an artificial construct based on various dialects of South-Eastern dialects, imitating the structure of the Polish language. The first signs of such artificially constructed nationalism praising purely imaginary “Ukrainian identity” can be seen in the early twentieth century under the Russian Empire. During the Second World War, many Ukrainian nationalists (Bandera, Shukhevich, etc.) joined Hitler. They had particularly brutal massacres of Communists, Jews, Poles, and Great Russians to their credit. This part is known collectively as the zapadentsy (from “Zapad” – “West” in Russian and in Ukranian).
In the far West of Ukraine live the Ruthenians, another branch of the Eastern Slavs with a very different identity from the zapadentsy.
Nezalezhnost’ (independence) as a concept of the zapadentsy
The independence of Ukraine was the slogan of the zapadentsy, while the inhabitants of the East saw nothing wrong in maintaining close contact with Russia, as they represented the same people with Russians in general. By the way, the Russian (Velikorossky) language is spoken by the vast majority of Ukrainians. The artificial Ukrainian language was known to only a few people and was used in everyday speech by a few. Nevertheless, this zapadentsy’s line prevailed in Ukraine in the 1990s, and they occupied key positions in politics, economics, culture, and information. The West actively supported such zapadentsy’s nationalism, despite its Nazi history and racist ideology. U.S. and NATO strategists decided pragmatically to use these forces in Ukraine to tear the entire country away from Russia and put it under full Western control in the future.
Ukrainian East vs. Ukrainian West
Throughout the new Ukraine, two tendencies, the western and the eastern, have been battling each other. It can be seen in the electoral maps – the pro-Moscow east voted for some candidates and the pro-Western, Russophobic West always for alternatives. The presidents succeeded each other, and their course represented a swing between Moscow and Washington. Kravchuk was a moderate Westerner. Kuchma took a multi-vector stance. Yushchenko leaned unequivocally toward the West. Yanukovich – inconsistently and hesitantly – sought support from Moscow. But all the while, Western trends continued to grow in politics and culture, to the point of calling for the genocide of the population of Crimea and the Ukrainian East in general, which, according to the nationalists, was loyal to Moscow.
The Maidan, actively supported by the U.S. – the same Biden, Victoria Nuland, and the neocons – brought the most radical zapadentsy to power in the coup d’état that toppled Yanukovich. Half of Ukraine was under a real threat of mass terror. The junta that came to power declared its NATO orientation and demanded the withdrawal of Russian ships from Sevastopol.
Putin comes into play
It was at this point that Moscow – no longer the same as it was under Yeltsin, but a new sovereign and clearly aware of its geopolitical interests – Putin’s Moscow decided to intervene. The population of Crimea, which happened to be part of Ukraine by accident, immediately declared its unification with Russia. The regions of Donbass – Donetsk and Lugansk – made the same decision. Odessa, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv would have done the same, – perhaps Poltava and Sumy, – but the zapadentsy in Kiev turned to mass repressions (the murder of civilians in Odessa in the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, etc.).
After several attempts to reclaim the Donbass, Kiev abandoned this strategy and began to prepare for a closer alliance with the West and NATO. At this point, Putin made a mistake: he recognized Ukraine’s new government in the hope of establishing peace with Kiev.
Minsk deadlock
This is the situation that we have at the moment. The Norman format and the Minsk agreements, in fact, are aimed only at de-escalation, but in the long term and even in the medium term do not solve anything.
There can only be one solution to this situation: the division of Ukraine into two parts, with recognition of the political sovereignty of both halves – Western Right-Bank Ukraine and Novorossiya, with a special status for Kyiv. Sooner or later this will happen. As sooner or later mainland China and Taiwan will be united within one state.
The U.S. is escalating
Since in the White House with the arrival of Biden, there was a group of extreme globalists, Atlanticists, neocons, and supporters of saving a unipolar world at any price, in fact, the same ones who provoked the Maidan in 2013-2014, a new round of escalation began. Russia is accused of preparing for an invasion of Ukraine, under this pretext in reality is going to accelerate the integration of Ukraine into NATO. Moscow has not the slightest intention of solving the situation by military means, but U.S. provocations leave Moscow no choice, as Putin, Lavrov, and other top Russian officials have repeatedly stated recently. Putin has declared Ukraine’s integration into NATO – along with the half of the population that generally considers itself one people with the Russians – a crossing of a “red line.” If the West fails to heed this warning, a military conflict cannot be ruled out.
It is necessary only to understand that it is not about an attack of one country on another, but about the processes of the big geopolitics. When Moscow was weak and ruled either by idiots or direct agents of Western influence, Russia has lost Ukraine, which fell into the hands of extremist nationalist politicians immediately picked up by the West. When Putin began to restore Russia’s sovereignty and power as a great power, Ukrainian issues came to the fore. Zbigniew Brzezinski was convinced that without Ukraine, Russia could not become the sovereign pole of a multipolar world. He would have been right. Russia today has set a firm course for becoming such a pole.
The attentive reader can draw the rest of the conclusions himself.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
If there is one thing which is obvious for all to see is that the EU and NATO hold one language against Belarus and another against Russia. For example, the EU has just agreed to impose a 5th package of sanctions on Belarus, but their official statement does not mention Aeroflot, Russia, or Putin by a single word. Of course, western politicians make all sorts of noises and grandstanding statements about Putin and Russia, but that is just that – hot air. They can bark at Russia all they want because they know that Russia does not care one bit about noise, especially since the Russians fully understand that there is nothing that the West could do, even theoretically, against Russia, as she is simply too powerful.
Ditto for economic sanctions. The EU has banned overflights by Belavia, but it has not touched Aeroflot (yet). Why not? Simple, because Russia could simply close her airspace which is currently the most expensive airspace on the planet, as it links Europe to Far East Asia.
Belarus, in sharp contrast to Russia, still remains weak, mostly because of Lukashenko’s incompetence and lack of vision. All he cares about is remaining in power, which also means that he does not want Belarus to be truly incorporated into Russia, lest he loses his status of “King of Belarus” or whatever he fancies himself to be.
Now I submit that becoming part of Russia is not only the best solution to all of Belarus’ problems, it is the only solution. By the way, that outcome is exactly what the western ruling elites are desperately trying to avoid, because they all realize that once Belarus becomes a part of Russia, say as an autonomous Federal subject, the party is over for the EU which won’t be able to touch Belarus – not economically, not politically and most definitely not militarily.
It is important to keep in mind that Polish, German, or Lithuanian military forces are a joke, at best they can have (small) parades, and shoot at unarmed civilians. But even taking on “just” the Belarussian military alone (without any Russian help) is not an option for them: there is no comparison between a Polish solider (or a Lithuanian one, for that matter) and a Belarusian one, it would be like comparing perfumed and fluffy show-dog with a wolf. Numbers here matter a lot less than the quality, training, and determination of the soldiers on both sides.
Still, shooting a Belarusian border guard and shooting a Russian paratrooper are two very, very different propositions, and the folks in the West know that. So far the Poles have only shot blanks or in the air, at least they say so, but if their current defenses are breached, or if a bullet flies across the border, the violence will ensue, that is inevitable. Right now, this is even likely.
I have to repeat myself: I have exactly *zero* trust in Lukashenko who, in my opinion, cares only about himself and remaining in power. Belarus claims to want to be an “allied state” to Russia, but has not even recognized Crimea as part of Russia! Right now, Belarus is, de facto, a Russian parasite, a freeloader country, run by a megalomaniac which needs to be replaced with a person the Kremlin can trust or, even better, with a person whose role would cease to be so important simply because Belarus and Russia would be truly and fully unified.
In the past, Lukashenko has zig-zagged even more than Erdogan, and his current pro-Russian stance is only due to the fact that the dimwits in the EU have tried to overthrow him one time too many, so now he is angry and wants to make them pay. But irrespective of how stupid EU politicians are, Belarus is in no condition to take on the entire EU by itself, so at the end of the day, it is Russia that will have to bail Belarus out (yet again!). Personally, I find that unacceptable.
Furthermore, objectively, right now the Poles and the Belarussians both have the same interest: to try to make the most out of this crisis. The Poles by proving how tough, courageous, and generally heroic they are in the defense of the sacred borders of the EU, the Belarussians by showing how cold-hearted and evil the Poles are. And for all the media attention to the 3-4 thousand people at the Polish border, this is a tiny number compared to the much larger numbers which cross into the EU every day or cross from France into the UK. In other words, this is completely and totally a manufactured pseudo-crisis. And the main beneficiary from this circus is the Poles who, from being the black sheep of the EU suddenly have turned into the heroic “defenders of the European realm from the Russia Asiatic hordes” at exactly zero risk for them. That needs to change.
As for the Russians, they are now forced to politically back Belarus in a crisis that in no way benefits Russia. And when Lukashenko makes (totally empty) threats to cut off the Russian gas lines to Poland, he is objectively helping the Western propaganda about Russia wanting to use her energy to blackmail Europe.
Finally, Belarus could bring a lot of good things to Russia, including a very (pro-)Russian population, a strong military, plenty of high-tech industries, and a good place to deploy forces to protect Kaliningrad.
By remaining separate, Belarus and Russian gain nothing, they both only stand to lose on many levels.
The good news is that the Belarusian and Russian militaries are already deeply integrated, but that integration needs to be SHOWN, and the best place to show it would be right at the Polish border. Again, pull back all the Belarussian border guards and replace them with a single regiment of Russian paratroopers and that alone will RADICALLY change the tone and actions of the West.
That would be the proverbial “tripwire force” which would absolutely terrify the Poles and the rest of the clowns who are playing at this “pretend-almost-war” on the border with Belarus (including 600 Brits, and assorted Germans and French units).
So my solution to this entire crisis is simple: fully unify Russia and Belarus. The only thing preventing this today is Lukashenko, so this process has to begin by getting rid of him.
Question: We pursue a common foreign policy. We seem to be already looking in the same direction. How much further do we need to go in this regard?
Sergey Lavrov: I think our prospects for further coordination of our foreign policies are good. Yesterday’s presidential meeting in Moscow and their principled agreement on union programmes and key spheres of activity was formalised today at a meeting of the Union Council of Ministers. The prime ministers signed the corresponding document. It will get finally approved at a meeting of the Supreme State Council, which the presidents plan to hold soon, most likely in October. This is critical for our joint actions if we want to pursue a coordinated foreign policy. We cooperate closely on almost all, without exception, items of the international agenda, be it at the UN, the OSCE or other organisations, including the CSTO, the EAEU and the CIS. We will thus have an additional foundation going forward.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the economy drives effective policy on the international arena. The stronger the economies of Belarus, Russia and the Union State, the more confident our actions on the international arena will be.
We have agreed with Foreign Minister of Belarus Vladimir Makei to hold a joint collegium, which is a regular annual event, in November. In 2021, it will take place in Moscow. The first item on the agenda will include the goals arising from our foreign policy coordination stemming from the agreements on forming union programmes as part of the main guidelines for the implementation of the Union Treaty over the next three years.
Very shortly, we will come up with additional items for the agenda to be discussed during a meeting of our Foreign Ministry and the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s collegium in the context of our actions at the UN and in promoting common approaches to disarmament and arms control.
We have ambitious plans, and we will put even more confidence in implementing them and will build on today’s developments and what will take place at the Supreme State Council as well.
Question: Both Russia and Belarus often say that sanctions are not an option for us. Is there a common counter-sanction policy?
Sergey Lavrov: Everything that has been done today on behalf of the presidents is the best response to the sanctions policy. Assuming that someone will just give up and give us a break is an exercise in futility. We are well aware of unreliability of our Western partners and their ability to grab the sanctions bludgeon at any given moment and for any reason. We should rely on ourselves, which is exactly what we will do following today’s meeting. However, we will leave the door open to anyone who is willing to cooperate based on equality and a balance of interests and is not striving to obtain unilateral advantages.
Vladimir Putin and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko held a joint news conference at the Kremlin following Russian-Belarusian talks
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Lukashenko, ladies and gentlemen,
We will briefly inform you about the results of our today’s work.
Our talks with the President of Belarus were intensive and constructive, as they have always been, which is fully in line with the nature of relations between our countries.
I have said this before but would like to repeat it today: Belarus, for us, is a good neighbour and our closest ally. Russian-Belarusian cooperation rests on the principles of mutual respect, support and consideration for each other’s interests. Close friendly ties between Russia and Belarus are buttressed by a common history and spiritual values and often by family relations.
The Republic is our main trade and economic partner in the CIS and was our third largest partner in the world in 2020, in this respect. This year, trade is once again on the rise and has already surpassed the pre-pandemic level. In January-June it amounted to $17.8 billion, recording growth of 34.9 percent, almost 35 percent.
Russia accounts for almost half of all of Belarus’ foreign trade. Russia has also made the biggest investment in the Belarusian economy.
So, it is no accident that during today’s talks we focused on trade and investment in our bilateral relations and on the issues linked with integration within the Union State framework.
As you know, over several years – we said today that we stepped up this work three or four years ago – our governments have been intensively working on a package of documents to further deepen integration between Russia and Belarus.
These are 28 so-called “union programmes” that are aimed at the unification of laws in Russia and Belarus in various economic areas, the levelling of conditions for the operation of the two countries’ economic entities, the formation of uniform financial and energy markets, transport infrastructure, the development and implementation of a common industrial and agricultural policy.
Today, I would like to say with satisfaction, that all 28 programmes have been agreed upon. Tomorrow, they are to be approved at a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State in Minsk, after which they will be submitted for approval by the Supreme State Council of the Union State, which will convene before the end of this year. Mr Lukashenko and I have agreed on that, and we will now check our schedules and determine a more or less exact timeline.
Let me briefly go over the contents of these programmes.
Some of them seek to harmonise the taxation and customs legislation of our two countries. In particular, an agreement will be signed covering the general principles of levying indirect taxes. An integrated system for administering indirect taxes within the Union State will be put in place. The goal is to make the price structure of products clear.
Also, the general guidelines for forming a single monetary policy in the future, and implementing currency regulation, integrating national payment systems and creating a common payment space within the Union State have been outlined. All this will help ensure fair competition and boost business activity on the financial market, as well as effectively mitigate the risks of money laundering and the financing of criminal activities, including terrorism.
We have reached agreements on matters that are highly sensitive for the Belarusian side, which are related to prices for Russian energy. After lengthy discussions, we managed to come up with mutually acceptable approaches to gas supplies. The price for Russian natural gas for Belarus will remain at the current level in 2022.
A document to create a unified gas market within the Union State will be signed before December 1, 2023. In addition, we will conclude an agreement on merging the petroleum and petroleum product markets, as well as an agreement on a single electricity market.
I would like to emphasise the fact that common approaches to legislation covering labour relations, occupational safety and health, employment, social insurance and pensions, as well as support for families with children, will be developed within the framework of these union programmes as well.
Implementing the Union State programmes will be an important step towards creating a single economic space for our two countries, as provided for in the 1999 Treaty on the Establishment of the Union State.
Eventually, this will provide a strong impetus to the further growth of the two countries’ economies, will facilitate an increase in labour efficiency, serve the interests of large, mid-sized and small businesses and help create more jobs.
Russian and Belarusian businesses will be given the opportunity to expand their activities across the Union State, including by establishing new joint ventures and boosting their export potential.
Most importantly, the average person in the two countries will, hopefully, benefit from the integration. Russians and Belarusians will be given equal rights and equal opportunities in the economic and social spheres and, the most important thing, the necessary conditions will be put in place to ensure a real improvement in living standards and the wellbeing of the people.
Today, we also discussed matters related to building a single defence space and ensuring the security of the Union Sate along its borders.
In this context, we gave much attention, as we attach great importance to this, to upcoming joint military exercises, Zapad 2021, to be held in Russia and Belarus. These exercises are not targeting anyone. However, conducting these exercises is logical, given that other alliances, for example, NATO, are moving fast to build their military presence close to the borders of the Union State and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation countries.
Mr Lukashenko talked about the political situation in the Republic of Belarus, which has stabilised.
In conclusion, returning to the main topic of today’s talks, I want to note that the development of equitable and mutually beneficial cooperation in the Union State has remained an explicit strategic priority for our two countries.
I want to thank the governments, ministries and teams of experts of the two countries who took part in developing and coordinating the Union State programmes. Thanks to you – I am now addressing our colleagues – and your well-coordinated and painstaking work, we have managed to achieve very impressive results on the path to integration. We believe – I am again addressing my colleagues in the government – that you will continue to proceed like this in the future.
According to traditions and protocol, first of all, I would like to thank my colleague, the President of Russia, for the warm welcome that our delegation has been given today, as well as the extremely honest, open and constructive nature of today’s meeting.
Among other things, all of you, journalists, finally have an opportunity to hear firsthand about the results of our meeting today. We must frankly admit that we have not often indulged you with such meetings after our long negotiations.
I would like to start with the biggest and perhaps the most popular topic of today’s conversation. Everyone is interested in the future of the union programmes. Taking into account what the President of Russia has just said, I will just try to add a few things. But I must apologise because I have to start with the history of this matter.
The President has just mentioned that this work begun more than three years ago now, and we have been duly reacting to all the feedback, concerns and criticism voiced in both Russia and Belarus, about the Union State having lost some of its dynamics.
As I said, substantive work on the so-called roadmaps, as you remember, began more than three years ago. Those roadmaps, in fact, provided integration frameworks for specific areas, that is, the roadmaps indicated in broad strokes the path that we were ready to take with regard to a specific topic of interstate relations. That is, we outlined our plans.
Each of today’s programmes – they actually evolved into programmes about 18 months ago, when we approached specific agreements because we thought that we had enough framework plans and needed more specific ones to respond to our people’s requests, and so – each of the programmes is a specific plan of actions we are going to implement. The governments have done a tremendous job. Mr Putin and I have made all the fundamental decisions today that concerned us.
I do not want to go into the contents of the documents we have reviewed. They are not classified and will be made public. But I will just mention a few of the main points. They include equal rights for businesses of both countries, Belarus and Russia, the importance of which various representatives of Belarus, including me as the president, have been stressing for many years now. That is the basics. We are equal partners. The competition must be honest for all companies on the Belarusian and Russian markets. It was the equality, beneficial and fruitful cooperation that the Belarusian‒Russian integration was started for in the first place.
The union programmes clearly describe development mechanisms for our shared economic space, for building integrated sector-specific markets and for implementing harmonised policies in finances, taxes, lending, pricing and trade.
I would like to specifically point out such matters as solving the problem of energy supply to Belarus, the increase in transportation services, funding for new investment projects, adopting common approaches to implementing our agricultural and industrial policies, and raising the level of mutual social guarantees for our citizens. President Putin has just covered these topics extensively.
Yet, it is high time we asked our critics in Belarus – specifically, in Belarus – the so-called opposition, both fugitives and those living in Belarus, who criticised me and the government and shouted so loud. I would like to ask the critics of our integration in Russia as well: where do you see a ball chained to Russia’s legs? There are no downsides for either Belarusians or Russians in these programmes – and there could not be. As President Putin mentioned, the aim of all these measures is to improve the welfare of our peoples. And it is probably time to put a lid on this matter. Our integration was coined to be mutually beneficial and nothing else.
It is fundamentally important that we have managed to achieve mutual understanding on all major aspects. Our governments will immediately start polishing certain points – tomorrow, during a meeting of the Union State’s Council of Ministers in Minsk. If the final touches are approved and agreed upon (and we are certain they will be), we will be ready to approve the package of union programmes, as President Putin said, during a meeting of the Supreme State Council. We will try to set a date for this meeting today.
We often hear accusations that the Union State is a purely political project. No, it is a unique integration framework that is advanced in many spheres, including politics. Take our military and political union. It is not a secret. We have advanced quite substantially in many fields, such as foreign policy, defence and security.
I would like to stress: life is convincingly proving that everything we do is for the benefit of our people and is aimed to meet their concrete needs. The Belarusians and the Russians do not feel they are aliens in either country: they have freedom of movement and they can get an education and [easily] find a job. This stands high. Moreover, people are confident that it is a matter of course, that it has always been this way. And this is the best proof of the viability of our union. I am absolutely certain that broadening integration and building up multi-faceted collaboration is the most indicative and effective reply to all our ill-wishers. Together we can only get stronger.
At the start of our talks, the President of Russia mentioned a very important and interesting phrase: We are emerging from the situation of a pandemic-crazy world, where production volumes and many other processes have sunk to nought over this period of time. We have to look for additional stimuli to promote the socioeconomic development of our countries. He said this and it is bang on to the point. We are looking for these advantages in the union of our two countries in order to overcome the negative consequences of the pandemic.
Today, we have also discussed in detail some current international problems and our relations with neighbouring countries and assiciations. We have dwelled on the situation in zones of instability, primarily in Afghanistan, from the point of view of threats to security of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. The priority in this context is to ensure comprehensive security of our countries and the CSTO as a whole. We will jointly approve a common position on this matter during the upcoming events in Dushanbe.
Even we, though located in the centre of Europe far from the so-called theatre of operations, felt the impacts of the Afghan crisis. Look at the refugee crisis on our borders, at how the progressive West is behaving: they are rattling the saber all the time. As is only natural, we have broached the subject of our allied military exercise, Zapad-2021. We will continue to build up our joint counteraction to common challenges and threats. There is no need to scream out loud that we are holding this exercise. We have an army, we have a joint force deployed in the Western sector, and it needs to be trained and instructed in military tactics. We are doing nothing that wouldn’t be done by our rivals and adversaries.
We have also focused on further normalisation of transport communications and cooperation in the field of microelectronics and building industry. Yes, we are confident that the Union State should expand the use of its scientific and technological potential.
It is clear that far from all the knots in our relations have been untied. But it is normal, given the existing scale of collaboration, and a platform for further progress has been created. Based on this platform, we will continue to ensure social guarantees and consistently enhance the wellbeing of Belarusians and Russians.
Many people will get the impression that our talks on these subjects and Union programmes are going on forever, and that we are handling these matters with kid gloves, to put it mildly. There can be no alternative because somewhere in the mid-1990s and by the late 1990s when you and I were exchanging ratification instruments of the Union State Treaty, we agreed to conduct integration at various speeds and various levels. At that time, the Belarus-Russia Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, called the Customs Union at the time, was established on your insistent initiative, and the CIS.
We maintain different speeds at these three levels on post-Soviet territory, but we were always ahead. During the era of President Yeltsin, we discussed the possibility of renouncing the Union State and the Belarus-Russia Union and making this format part of the Eurasian Economic Union. At that period of time, we had enough intelligence and wisdom not to go ahead with this. The new President of Russia supported this, and we were not mistaken. We are setting an example of how to move ahead within the EAEU and all the more so within the CIS. In effect, we are pushing ahead like a bulldozer, and we are paving the way for, as we really hope, future associations and unions in the post-Soviet region. The Union is an example and a road that all states counting on a more close-knit union will have to take.
The President of Russia tactfully avoided mentioning all kinds of assertions that someone would take over someone, and so on and so forth. I would just like to point out that the President of Russia and I never suffered from this disorder. We can treat anyone who has had this disorder. I have recently said that we are sufficiently smart people, and if we find it necessary to make our already thoroughly close relations even more powerful, he and I will accomplish this in no time at all. Therefore one should not rattle and juggle old phrases and terminology about us trying to take over someone or to merge together contrary to the desires of our peoples. We simply wanted to accomplish something, and we singled out 28 areas and implemented the task in three years. Quite possibly, three years is a long time, but this is a mere instant in terms of history. Therefore one should not worry in this respect, and we will do everything possible in the interests of the people. And if we need even more close political and military integration, we will do this without delay, as soon as we feel this is required by our people in Belarus and Russia.
Most importantly, and the President of Russia and I have discussed this, 28 programmes have been inked, and this is a conceptual view of any specific problem. Today, it is necessary to sift through volumes of domestic legislation and our joint agreements, to adapt them or to channel them via a direction that has been determined by the President of Russia and me. As has been said, we will finally approve this direction at a meeting of our Supreme State Council.
Thank you.
Question: Good afternoon,
I have a question for you, President Putin.
Indeed, the list of subjects included in the union programmes brings union integration between our two countries to the highest and broadest level.
We must give credit to the governments that were able to agree upon a number of highly sensitive and principled matters such as monetary and foreign exchange policy, customs and taxation systems, a number of sector-specific problems, and social guarantee convergence. However, we must also admit the fact that for a number of years now, year in and year out, the development of the Union State was held back by a number of trade and economic hurdles. Frankly speaking, it is not easy for the Belarusian people to understand some of them. For example, the working conditions for Belarusian carriers in Russia are worse than for the Lithuanian or Polish carriers, and this despite the fact that our countries agreed on creating a common economic space more than 20 years ago.
In this regard, my question is: do you think that once adopted and implemented, these union programmes will make it possible to resolve that pile of long-standing mutual problems and to leave them behind as we push ahead into the future?
Vladimir Putin: You have taken a bird’s eye view of the matters finding a solution to which was a challenge for us. But if we start to dig deeper, it will become quite clear why it was so difficult for us to agree on things. It is because one side believed that it was enough to make some operational decisions at the governmental level and things would be settled, while the other side believed that certain decisions on certain matters could not be made until more fundamental decisions had been made.
I just mentioned what we agreed on, and I will say it again, since this is an absolutely critical matter. So, we have agreed on conducting common macroeconomic policy. I will not go into details now, and you are probably aware of what this is about. We have also agreed on harmonising monetary policy, payment system integration, ensuring information security, and deepening cooperation in customs regulations and taxation. That is, we are talking about transparency of the customs value of goods and definition of the transparent structure of the value of goods in the economy in general.
Our experts believed that without resolving these matters we cannot move on to other matters concerning individual commodity groups, including energy. We agreed to create a single methodology, which is important, for harmonising indirect taxes and a department which would control these processes.
When the economy becomes transparent, when it becomes clear how much the goods cost when they are imported into any of the two states, Russia or Belarus, and then enter our customs territories, then we can talk about those goods’ real value. And this allowed us to agree on something else – we are now moving towards a unified industrial policy and access to government procurement and government contracts. This amounts to a transition to very specific work in these areas.
But we disagreed for quite a long time. I have to say that our Belarusian partners are hard negotiators, but still, gradually, breaking the ideas down to elemental parts, we have practically – well, not practically, but fully agreed on all these matters. The President of Belarus and I have reaffirmed this today. We have agreed on all the details, you know, all the problems. When we got down to the details and spelled it all out, this puzzle just came together, and I hope it all really works.
Question: Thank you very much.
Please, if it’s possible one more short question, since I have such an opportunity. Did you discuss full resumption of air services today after COVID-19, and further developments in general? Were some decisions made maybe?
Vladimir Putin: No, we discussed this at our previous meeting. This time, the President of Belarus did not bring up this matter, but the President of Belarus does not yet know about the decision just made at the government commission, which met not far from here, at Government House. They decided to lift all COVID-related restrictions on air services.
Alexander Lukashenko: You have not told me about this.
Vladimir Putin: No I did not, but now I am informing you.
Alexander Lukashenko: Well, thank you.
Vladimir Putin: Before these so-called COVID restrictions were introduced, we had over 200 flights a week. To be precise, 201 in fact, and at the moment just 36.
I do not expect the pre-COVID level to get back to normal in just a couple of two days – to over 200 flights – because it all depends on the market and the carriers. But I believe the process will unfold speedily, also because, I hope, the agreements and the programmes we have informed you about will be quickly and efficiently implemented.
Question: A question for both presidents. You touched upon the topic of economic integration. What are the prospects for political integration, or are there any?
And, back to the Union State programmes, will Belarus enjoy special prices for energy resources? Is there a plan to create a single energy market regulator in the Union State? I am also interested if a decision is planned on a common Union State currency. Have you discussed additional credit support for Minsk?
Vladimir Putin: With regard to political integration, this is what the Union Treaty was tasked to accomplish from the outset, when the Union Treaty was being formed in 1997 and a treaty signed a little later, I think, in 1999.
We believe – just as your colleague asked a question about individual commodity groups, and what they succeeded in agreeing upon and what remains to be agreed – we decided that we need not to focus on separate items that are beneficial or not to a particular side, but instead should make comprehensive decisions thus creating a solid economic foundation for making progress in sensitive, but still peripheral matters.
It works the same way here. We operate on the premise that, in spite of this being a noble cause, we must first create political integration and an economic basis, a foundation, in order to be able to move forward, on the political track as well. We have not taken up these issues yet. To reiterate, we believe that we should first focus on the economy, and everything else will then need additional regulation, including, perhaps, at the level of the Union parliament. I do not rule out the possibility of this being created. But before we do that we need, as they say, to grow up. We did not discuss this, and these items were not on our agenda.
With regard to the second part of your question, I have already said that we will be addressing issues related to individual product groups in a comprehensive manner, even though we understand that the energy issue is highly sensitive. Therefore, as I said, we will leave the same price for Belarus for the next year, 2022. The price for Belarus will be $128.5 per 1,000 cubic metres. For your information, in case you are not aware of it, the price on the European market is $650 per 1,000 cubic metres. So, I think, the difference is clear.
We will not even adjust the price for Belarus to take account of the dollar inflation, which is quite high. They planned 2 percent, but it will be over 5 percent actually. Now, they are saying it will be a little lower, but still two to three times higher than the target. But we are not going to adjust either for the inflation in Russia or for the dollar inflation. We will keep the price as it is this year. However, later on, as I said, we will nevertheless work out common approaches both on the gas market and on the petroleum and petroleum product market.
What was the third matter?
Question: Are you planning to provide additional support to Minsk in terms of lending?
Vladimir Putin: Yes, the governments are discussing this. The President of Belarus and I also discussed this. The total volume of loans from September through late 2022 will amount to about $630 million, approximately $630–640 million. Anyway, it is going to be over $600 million.
Alexander Lukashenko: As concerns political integration, I fully support President Putin although he was too modest and did not mention his own role in resolving this matter.
We hit a brick wall at the time with certain issues in the Union, including political issues. It was then that the Russian President said words that became proverbial. We were having similar talks, in this very office where we had a one-to-one meeting today. That meeting was in an extended format. He reproached both Belarusian and Russian experts and said: “If we hit a wall and obviously have no way of solving this problem today, let’s put it aside until a moment comes when we can deal with it, when the time is ripe.” We have managed to not politicise our talks too much ever since.
I have just said openly and honestly: we can go back to any problem, including a political one, if we need to, and we will develop our relations based on that premise. This issue will not get rusty, as we like to say in Russia and Belarus. This is why I support President Putin’s idea that the time will come and we will not keep anybody waiting.
As for special prices, you must know that in fact, all our products are priced based on special terms due to free trade agreements in the Union State and the EAEU. We pay no duties, with the exception of energy. President Putin spoke about gas. Because it is an exception, we review the prices, including gas prices, almost every year. At this point, the oil exported outside Belarus sells at global prices if we exclude the duty.
Regarding loans, President Putin did not say anything but I must admit that I told him that we do not need more loans. If we can save money thanks to the nuclear power plant for which we received a loan (according to Russia’s practice everywhere in the world), I asked him to give us this saved money as a loan. He agreed to consider it if there were good promising projects for Belarus and Russia. We are happy with this. There is also the loan that my colleague has just mentioned.
Speaking about common currency, I would like you, as journalists, to understand: the question is not whether Putin or Lukashenko are stalling on this process. Remember, we have researched this issue. The Central Bank of Russia and the National Bank of Belarus unanimously asked us not to consider this issue yet. They said that neither they nor our countries were ready. President Putin and I listened and put this issue aside. It does not mean we will never get back to it. Currency is not the problem per se. It does not matter if the value of the dollar, euro or ruble increases, what matters and has always mattered is a common issuing institution. There is a definite problem with this. I think we may be able to solve it even while we are both presidents.
This is the background I wanted to explain.
Vladimir Putin: Regarding a common currency unit, we agree with this, and the President of Belarus has also agreed that it is very important to implement a unified macroeconomic policy. We have taken the first steps in this field. I have already said that the Central Bank of Russia and the National Bank of Belarus should harmonise monetary policy, ensure the integration of payment systems and facilitate information security in the financial sphere. This means that we are moving to address a more difficult and complicated problem.
Alexander Lukashenko: Yes, this is correct.
Vladimir Putin: We need to work gradually. The road maps and these programmes stipulate all this. Consequently, everything will be obvious there. We can see that countries with weaker economies are suffering in the European Union. They could devalue something in a well-known situation, but they are unable to do this because they have no national currency. The euro is a strong currency, and what are they to do? All-out price hikes is the only option fraught with dire social consequences. Therefore we must act very cautiously, analyse the pluses and minuses, the positive aspects of our neighbours and negative examples. We are trying to do this.
You are talking about energy prices. I have said that 1,000 cubic metres cost $650 on the free European market. But the wise-guy members of the European Commission’s previous line-up invented market gas pricing, and the results are here for everyone to see.
And we prefer a different approach. We also stipulate market pricing, and this price is pegged to the crude oil price. No one but market regulates it. But the fluctuations are much less pronounced. But here, someone has failed to pump the required 27 billion cubic metres into underground gas reservoirs, causing a shortage in gas supplies, business activity increased or something else happened, and there you are – gas prices start to exceed the prices of crude oil and petroleum derivatives. So you can see a substantial price hike.
Gazprom does not charge such selling prices under long-term contracts and our pricing principles. Those Europeans who have agreed to sign long-term contracts with us can rub their hands with joy and feel happy because they would otherwise have to pay $650. Gazprom sells gas to Germany for $220; at any rate, this was the case only recently.
Considering rising oil prices considered, this price will still go up, but the process will be more gradual. In reality, Gazprom is interested in this because it also creates a certain safety cushion. There will be no abrupt slump and drop in prices. This is the gist of the matter. Everyone stands to gain from this. Those members of the European Commission who came up with their own ideas have got the desired result.
Question: Mr Lukashenko, Mr Putin,
I have a question about migrants. It is a consequence of the current developments in Afghanistan, which actually concern Belarus as well. The humanitarian crisis in the nearby European region is gaining momentum and growing stronger, but the EU has turned a blind eye to the Polish authorities’ actions towards refugees from Afghanistan and other countries. Instead of helping, they are ousting them, throwing them out of their territory quite harshly, with the use of special equipment. This has little to do with respect for human rights and democratic principles, which the West loves to talk about so much.
The question is whether we can expect Minsk and Moscow to take joint efforts soon to settle this problem.
Alexander Lukashenko: You are providing interesting facts.
Vladimir Putin: My Western colleagues and the leaders of some European countries have called on me to take joint actions, saying that there is a crisis on the Belarusian border with Lithuania and Poland. They are asking me to influence the situation. My answer is very simple: this is no concern of ours; this is not our border. It is the state border of the Republic of Belarus with Lithuania and Poland.
This leads to my first question. In principle, all sides would like to talk directly with the Taliban, even though the movement is on the UN list of designated terrorist groups. Nevertheless, they say that the Taliban is controlling the territory and so we need to talk with them. But President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko did not come to power as a result of a war but by means of a public vote. Whether some people do not like the results of the vote is another matter. So my answer is why talk with us? Talk with the Belarusian authorities instead. Russia has nothing to do with this. This is the first thing that I wanted to say.
Second, many people are indeed asking us to help evacuate the citizens of other countries and even some Afghans from Afghanistan. We are doing this. We are not doing this secretly; we are doing this after coordinating the matter regarding certain groups of citizens with the Taliban. European countries are also talking about the catastrophe underway there, beating their breasts and blaming themselves for leaving their people in the lurch. If this is so, and if some Afghans (or not only Afghans, because all refugees, including Afghans, are being pushed out of European countries) have approached the Belarusian border with Lithuania or Poland, I do not understand the logic. You can accuse Belarus of all kinds of things, but at least screen the refugees and allow the Afghans to stay. Should they be pushed back to Afghanistan? And then they will ask us to help evacuate them from the country, won’t they? There is no logic in that.
I will not provide any political assessment now, but I would like to point out once again that Russia has nothing to do with this, that this is a sovereign concern of Belarus and its neighbours.
Question: May I ask an additional question? What is your personal view on the situation? Do you believe that Belarus has, as the West claims, launched a hybrid war against the EU?
Vladimir Putin: You see, very many sharp statements have been made to this effect. My Belarusian colleague himself is a professional when it comes to sharp statements. You can ask him, and he will tell you.
Alexander Lukashenko: No, I cannot do this in your presence…
Vladimir Putin: No, do not do this, please.
Well, has anyone started a war there? I am not aware of this. The answer is very simple: if you want to clear up a question or a problem, if you really do want this, talk with the Belarusian authorities at any level, I do not know which level it should be, and do settle the problem with the neighbouring state. Where do we come in on this?
Alexander Lukashenko: You know, the President of Russia is being delicate again. We are perfectly aware of the problem, and I have updated him; we discussed it. The EU and others are trying to settle this problem, in part, by making some complaints to the Russian leadership, in particular, my colleague, asking him to influence or pressure Lukashenko, and so on. I am grateful to him for his position, which he puts forth everywhere, that the Belarusian leadership and authorities are there and, as President Putin has said, the problem should be taken up with them. However, they claim that they cannot talk with us because the President [of Belarus] is not legitimate or the authorities are not what they should be. But the Taliban are a different matter, as we say, this is a different story, and so they can talk and communicate with them. Therefore, I am grateful to the President and leadership of Russia for their position. I personally and the authorities of Belarus appreciate this position.
Second, we have overlooked one point. In fact, we have not overlooked it, as journalists in Russia and Belarus know very well. What did Washington say as soon as the acute phase of the US presence in Afghanistan ended? They called on everyone, including Russia and the Central Asian republics, and ordered – yes, ordered – the EU to take in all those who will flee (I am speaking plainly) from Afghanistan. We have recently discussed this issue during an online conference, a videoconference, and we have coordinated a nearly unanimous view on what we should do. Europeans have just rolled over and invited the Afghans in. Take a look at this information; it has happened only recently.
But if you invited them, do take them along no matter where they came from: after all, they have worked for you all this time. There are hundreds of thousand Afghans, who spent 20 years working for those who have fled to their holes. What complaints can there be here against me, or Belarusians, let alone Russia?
But it must be understood that some Afghans and Iraqis – they have also ruined Iraq, as you know, it was not us or Russia, – they are fleeing from Lebanon and Syria and other countries they invaded. These people are fleeing via Russia, via Belarus, or directly to Belarus. This concerns Russia and Belarus most directly. We have not invited them and they are not heading for Belarus: they are crossing via Belarus to countries that have invited them. So, take them, they are your problem. This is our position.
And then, what are you urging us to do? Every day, you introduce new sanctions against us. In terms of sanctions, we are ahead of the Russian Federation by an order of magnitude. Over the past six months they have imposed a lot of sanctions on us. So, is it my duty or that of the Belarusian people to defend them on the border? No! They have wound down all programmes, leaving just a readmission agreement. You know about this. Well now, enjoy the fruit of your policies.
Look at the face they present. I won’t speak straight from the shoulder, although I could. Look at the democratic face they present: they fire at people, they set the dogs on them, they catch migrants in Poland and Lithuania, marshal them into groups and march them across the border to Belarus, shooting above their heads. Thank God, so far they are firing into the air, although there are victims. There are dead bodies that they chuck across the border for us to pick up. This is their democratic face.
This is why I don’t see any reasons for grievances against us. We honestly carried out our mission until they started turning the situation upside down by force and toppling the government. It is up to the Belarusian people to decide whether the government is legitimate or not. We did not meddle in the US elections, when they were shooting people point-blank during the ballot and afterwards. Therefore, they better sort out things at home.
What we have to do as a reliable partner, we will do under all circumstances. If Europe wants to have normal relations with us, we are ready to talk at their earliest opportunity. And we will ask Russia to support us, if necessary, and we will operate jointly. But so far, there is no such need – thank God. If need be, we will join hands in no time and will counteract all the negative trends in the interests of Russians and Belarusians.
Question: Good afternoon. My question is for both leaders.
Today you said a lot about important allied programmes, but the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State was signed over 20 years ago, and as we know, most of those decisions have not been implemented yet. Proceeding from today’s decisions, in your opinion, at what integration stage are Russia and Belarus? And how much closer – if at all – have they come to the implementation of these agreements reached 20 years ago?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: I believe that we should have started with what we agreed upon today. We need to create an economic base, as I said, the foundation of our relations, and everything else is a political superstructure, as it was said back in the old days.
So we are doing what we have agreed upon today, and then we will be ready to take the next steps. But it is work for the future; we need to monitor the rapidly changing situation. We will see what will happen after the implementation of the programme I have just mentioned. I am sure that we are on the right track.
Alexander Lukashenko: I totally agree with the President of Russia, nothing to add here. That was a short and clear answer to the question.
If you want to dig into the previous agreements, and I am not sure which agreements you mean, we can return to this matter in some other format and see what those agreements were and which of them we did not implement.
The President is right, we have created a base for further progress, and we cannot fail. It could take two hours for both of us to tell you about the mistakes the European Union has made, and we used to model ourselves on it. And look at it now, there are numerous trends leading to destruction. They are openly ctiticising each other already. We do not want to make the same mistakes and the mistakes that were made in our union state, the Soviet Union. We draw conclusions. Time has passed and we could have missed something, and we can dwell on that, but we have returned to the creation of a base. As the President said, without the foundation, it is impossible to build the integration house. We have long abandoned the idea of starting building the house from the roof.
Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much.
Alexander Lukashenko: Thank you.
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Ed Note: This is currently a machine translation of the 28 points of ‘Union State’ Development and it is here for people to understand the scope of this development. We have to wait for a formal transcript from Russian to English to avoid miscommunication. I beg your understanding on this issue.
1. Convergence of macroeconomic policies
An agreement was reached on the synchronization of strategic management in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in terms of macroeconomic policy and the formation of official statistical information. Harmonization of the legislation of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in this area will create a basis for joint support of small and medium-sized businesses, streamline the consideration of situations in the field of insolvency and bankruptcy.
2. Harmonization of monetary policy and macroprudential regulation
An agreement was reached to conclude an agreement between the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus on the principles and mechanisms of monetary policy harmonization by December 2022.
The implementation of the agreement will be aimed at achieving a comparable and consistently low level of inflation, creating similar financial conditions for business entities in both countries.
3. Harmonization of foreign exchange regulation and control
The parties agreed to harmonize the rules for opening bank accounts for residents in non-resident banks, conducting currency transactions, and requirements for the repatriation of foreign currency earnings.
4. Harmonization of information security requirements in the financial sector
The parties agreed to harmonize approaches to ensuring information security, create a mechanism for mutual recognition of audit results in the field of information security, and apply cross-border integrity control and authentication tools in the exchange of electronic information.
5. Harmonization of regulatory norms for credit and non-credit financial institutions, as well as the financial market as a whole, including ensuring the creation of common principles of deposit insurance
The parties agreed to harmonize the regulation of the financial market, in particular leasing organizations and microfinance institutions, as well as mutual access of banking and insurance organizations to the financial markets of the Union State.
6. Harmonization of anti-money laundering and financial terrorism (AML/CFT) requirements for the financial sector
An agreement was reached between the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus on the harmonization of the AML/CFT legislation of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus for the financial sector and the implementation of joint activities in this area.
7. Integration of payment systems in the field of national payment card systems, financial message transmission and settlement systems, implementation of the international financial message standard ISO 20022, fast payment systems, development of financial technologies, harmonized approaches in the field of supervision and monitoring of payment systems
The parties agreed to improve the mechanisms of cross-border exchange of financial information between Russian and Belarusian credit institutions and legal entities, as well as to develop cooperation on fast payments, transfer of financial messages and settlements, supervision of payment service market participants, and development of financial technologies.
8. Harmonization of requirements in the field of protection of the rights of consumers of financial services and investors, as well as prevention of unfair practices in the financial market
The parties agreed to develop proposals for the harmonization of the legislation of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in order to ensure the provision of an equal amount of protection of rights to consumers of financial services using the same financial services.
9. Integration of information systems of state regulatory bodies on traceability of goods
The parties agreed to synchronize approaches to the functioning of the traceability mechanism, integrate information systems to automate data exchange, which will ensure control over the turnover of goods subject to traceability.
10. Integration of product labeling information systems
The parties agreed to unify approaches to the legal regulation and technical support of mandatory labeling of goods by means of identification, to synchronize the work necessary for mutual recognition of identification tools, in order to ensure unhindered access to the market of labeled goods.
11. Harmonization of tax and customs legislation and cooperation in the customs sphere
In the tax and customs spheres, the parties agreed to conclude international agreements on general principles of taxation for indirect taxes and on deepening cooperation between customs authorities, introduce an integrated system of indirect tax administration of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, and establish a joint advisory body – the Union State Committee on Tax Issues.
Approaches to maintaining statistics on mutual trade, systems for categorizing participants in foreign economic activity, and the institution of authorized economic operators will be harmonized.
12. Integration of information systems of state regulatory authorities in terms of veterinary and quarantine phytosanitary control
The parties agreed to integrate information systems in order to automate the process of data exchange on issued certificates of quarantine phytosanitary control (supervision). Traceability of controlled goods and quarantined products will be ensured, which will increase the effectiveness of quarantine phytosanitary and veterinary control (supervision) and speed up the movement of goods and vehicles across the state border. The Parties will ensure traceability of all livestock and plant-based products.
13. Integration of transport control information systems of state regulatory bodies
The parties agreed to develop software that will allow the exchange of data on the results of transport control on the territory of the two states, which will increase the transparency and safety of road transport.
14. Unification of transport market regulation
In the field of air transport, equal tariff conditions will be implemented for the provision of airport and air navigation services, as well as restrictions on frequency and unification of airworthiness regulation will be lifted.
In the field of railway transport, it is planned to work out the unification of legislation, including tariff regulation, licensing, organization of passenger and cargo transportation, security, and requirements in the field of labor relations.
In the sphere of water transport, vessels flying the Russian and Belarusian flags are supposed to sail along the internal waterways of the parties according to unified rules. In the field of road transport, an agreement on transportation on a non- permissive basis will be concluded.
In the field of road management, general norms of legislation will be prepared in terms of classification of roads, requirements for the implementation of road activities, ensuring road safety, placing road service facilities, and carrying out control and supervisory activities.
15. Formation of a unified gas market
The parties agreed to coordinate actions regarding the formation of prices for Russian gas for the Belarusian Side in 2022, as well as to develop principles for the functioning and regulation of the unified gas market of the Union State (by July 2022).
Until December 1, 2023, it is planned to sign an addendum to the Union Program that defines the basic principles of functioning and regulation of the unified gas market, as well as the timing of their implementation, based on the movement towards convergence of business conditions in the gas sector relative to the current level.
16. Formation of unified oil and petroleum products markets
The parties agreed to adopt an international agreement on the unification of the oil and petroleum products markets of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus and the harmonization of national legislation.
17. Formation of the unified electric energy market
The parties agreed to sign an interstate agreement on the formation of a unified electricity market and rules for the functioning of this market, providing for the harmonization of the legislation of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, and also outlined a trajectory for implementing the principles of deeper integration of the electricity markets of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.
18. Development of nuclear energy
The parties agreed to ensure the unification of legislation in the areas of operation of nuclear power facilities, regulation of radiation safety, emergency preparedness and response, and management of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste by the end of 2023.
19. Formation of a unified agricultural policy
The parties agreed to implement the convergence of legislation in the field of agriculture in order to increase the volume of mutual trade in agricultural products, remove administrative barriers, ensure food security and joint scientific and technological development of agriculture.
20. Formation of a unified industrial policy
The parties agreed to encourage the development of joint ventures, as well as to implement a unified policy to support production and sales. It provides for the elimination of economic and technical barriers to the production of industrial products in order to increase the transparency of bilateral trade and increase trade turnover.
21. Introduction of uniform rules for access to state orders and public procurements
The parties agreed to harmonize legislation in the field of ensuring equal access to public procurement and public procurement, as well as in the field of regulating state (municipal) procurement. An agreement was reached to use bank guarantees issued by Belarusian banks for public procurement in Russia and eliminate restrictions on access to state (municipal) procurement.
22. Uniform rules for consumer protection
The parties agreed to conclude an intergovernmental agreement on common Rules for consumer protection in the Union State by December 31, 2022.
23. Unified competition rules
The parties agreed to approve common approaches to the formation and implementation of competition rules on the basis of an intergovernmental agreement that will define common competition rules, including the powers of the antimonopoly authority in terms of the possibility of appointing unscheduled inspections and examinations.
24. Unification of requirements for the organization and implementation of trading activities
The parties agreed on the adoption of regulatory legal acts that provide common requirements in the field of trade and public catering regulation, as well as on the harmonization of legislation in this area.
25. Formation of common principles of functioning of the single communications and informatization market
The parties agreed to develop new and update existing intergovernmental, interdepartmental and other agreements in the field of communications and informatization, to unify legislation in the field of postal communications, to build the infrastructure of communication networks, as well as to abolish roaming on the territory of the Union State. It provides for the harmonization of the use of electronic documents and electronic signatures, as well as the provision of public services in electronic form.
26. Unification of accounting regulations and preparation of accounting (financial) statements
The parties agreed to create conditions for the circulation of comparable consolidated financial statements of business entities, to form an information base for expanding foreign economic, investment and business ties, to allow business entities to enter international capital markets, and to provide interested parties with access to the financial statements of business entities.
27. Unification of legislation in the field of tourism activities
The parties agreed on the harmonization of tourism development strategies, norms for the activities of guides and interpreters, and the creation of common rules for informing about the standardization of the quality of hotel services.
Guarantees provided to tourists in the provision of tourist services, requirements for conducting tourist activities in terms of financial responsibility of the tour operator will be unified, and the rights of tourists will be protected if the tour operator cannot fulfill its obligations to provide tourist services.
28. Implementation of a coordinated social and labor policy
The parties agreed to develop common approaches to the harmonization of legislation in terms of labor relations and labor protection, employment, social insurance and pension provision, support for families with children, social services and social support for certain categories of citizens.
At the meeting of the Council of Ministers, the draft Decree of the Supreme State Council of the Union State on approval of the Main directions for implementing the provisions of the Treaty on the Establishment of the Union State for 2021-2023 and Union Programs was approved.
The Heads of Government note that the positive development of the Union State, the strengthening of national economies, and the solution of social tasks vital for the citizens of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus are hindered by the destructive actions of a number of Western states and structures that contradict international law. In this regard, joint actions were agreed in the context of applying illegitimate economic sanctions against the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.
The Russian and Belarusian sides also note their firm intention not to stop there, but to step up joint efforts to deepen integration processes within the framework of the Union Building process. We will continue to implement all the fundamental provisions of the Treaty on the Establishment of the Union State.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 