President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Lukashenko, colleagues,
As agreed, we are holding today a State Council meeting.
We meet on a regular basis, and I remember very well our last meeting in Minsk when we had a rather thorough and detailed discussion of our economic problems in the first place. We analysed them, gave relevant instructions to our colleagues to carry out some work at expert and government level. And today, we have the opportunity to follow up on that discussion, to continue this joint work both in narrow and later in expanded format, to discuss our joint efforts.
Indeed, everything we do within the Union State framework – and you spoke about it yesterday, too, Mr Lukashenko – is extremely important for all the integration processes taking place in the post-Soviet area. And in many areas, we are ahead of other integration structures and associations, sort of leading the way and contributing to development of other processes. All this is very important.
We are very happy to see you. Welcome once again!