Putin will receive Lukashenka in Moscow on April 6

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on April 6 with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. On this day, a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State will take place, two sources close to the presidential administration and diplomatic circles told Vedomosti.

“Russia and Belarus will be represented by the first persons,” says one of the Vedomosti sources. According to him, the agenda will include issues related to the joint fight against sanctions pressure, as well as ensuring security.

The last face-to-face meeting between Putin and Lukashenko took place on December 19, 2022 in Minsk, when the Russian president visited the Belarusian capital for the first time in three years. Following the talks, Putin said that Russia and Belarus had agreed to develop new military equipment. At the same time, Lukashenka said that the Belarusian army had put on combat duty the S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems and the Iskander operational-tactical missile systems transferred by Moscow. During that meeting, the leaders also discussed issues of trade and economic cooperation “with an emphasis on import substitution”, cooperation in the energy sector and security issues in the region.

This year the Belarusian leader has been very active in the international arena. Since the end of January, Alexander Lukashenko has paid visits to the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, China and Iran, having met with the leaders of these countries, including on March 1 with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Contacts with Russia also continued – at the end of January Foreign Minister Sergei Larov visited Minsk.

There is every reason for regular meetings between the leaders of Russia and Belarus, the first and most important of which are Western sanctions against the economic and technological development of Minsk and Moscow, says Nikolai Mezhevich, head of the Center for Belarusian Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Therefore, there are many areas for joint work – from seed material for the agricultural industry to microelectronics for the military-industrial complex.

Speaking about Lukashenka’s diplomatic and economic activity in Asia, Mezhevich notes that given the observed interdependence of Russia and Belarus, it makes no sense to look for markets and economic ties outside the Union State one by one. “It can be said openly that the achievements of the leadership of Belarus in the foreign arena in terms of purchasing components and overcoming sanctions are not purely its achievements, just as Moscow’s achievements are impossible without Minsk’s contacts and activity in building alternative foreign trade chains. In this regard, Lukashenka once again outlined the key areas of cooperation of the Union State,” the expert says.

Belarus, which faced harsh sanctions before Russia, has rich experience in this area, says Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, a senior researcher at IMEMO RAS. The restrictive measures of the West will be introduced further, being already better thought out in relation to both countries. Therefore, the issue of synchronizing the response policy of Moscow and Minsk, methods of adapting to sanctions and parrying their consequences is acute, the expert said.