News & Events in Belarus

MINSK, 3 December (BelTA) – I believe that various sanctions and trade wars in the world are a chance for the economies of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel. Excerpts from his interview with Russian TV presenter Sergey Brilev were published by Vesti.ru, BelTA has learned.

“Today there is a strange, terrible situation in the world in terms of trade. Everyone is talking about trade wars. This, however, turned to be a blessing in disguise for us. A unique chance! Russia is pressured from all sides. I am watching how you are fighting back there. The talk about sanctions can be heard everywhere today. Look, take in easy. We, a small country, were under sanctions for ten years. We did our best to survive. We survived. Today, once we have united, there is a chance for our economies. It is great that we have set up the Eurasian Economic Union. Let us make progress here and prove it to those who are dreaming of sanctions and imposing them on Russia,” Alexander Lukashenko said.

The president is confident that the huge territory of the EAEU with a population of 200 million people and aligned economies and enterprises cannot be destroyed by sanctions. “China is the world’s largest economy of tomorrow. We are in perfect relations with China. We do not have to go under anybody. We are proud Soviet people. We suffered from much worse things. There were iron curtains everywhere, but we lived,” the head of state stressed.

The president added that the times would be difficult as there are attempts to pull the countries on the post-Soviet space apart. “They have their interests in the Central Asia. I know what I am talking about. You see what is happening in Ukraine. They have already reached Belarus. They are almost ready to take us to NATO, only, of course, if the authorities change. They have not talked about it before. There is a fight, and one of the strategies is to destroy Russia,” the president said.

“This is also a fight for Russia. It will be difficult, but we need to pull together, set a goal and try hard to achieve it. We can do it,” Alexander Lukashenko stressed.

According to BelTA, in an excerpt of the interview that was published earlier, the president of Belarus spoke about the cooperation of countries in the EAEU. He expressed the opinion that countries have already gained certain experience of integration cooperation and examples of how this evolves in other countries, for example, in the European Union. However, it is necessary to strictly follow the agreements reached and be consistent in the implementation of the goals. “We know everything, but we do not do everything. You know that we create problems with our own hands: barriers emerge in trade although we agreed on the free movement of capital, workforce, commodities, services and so on. I told Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev] that we see national egoism every step on the way in trade. But we know that this should not happen,” the head of state said.

When asked what mistakes of the European Union the Eurasian Economic Union should avoid, the president said that all processes were new for the EU, and therefore mistakes are inevitable. “We need to be patient and overcome them, which has not been done yet. Problems have been accumulating. For example, refugees, mistakes related to the NATO invasion of certain states. Some EU members have joined in. They have made a lot of mistakes. A basis was created for nationalism in different countries. Those political forces that had never been noticed before, neither in Germany nor in UK, began to show up against the background of these mistakes. Nationalism began to prevail in many states. They began seeking some kind of independence, the destruction of the European Union,” said Alexander Lukashenko.