MOSCOW, June 28. /TASS/. Russia and Belarus are endeavoring to support resilience of their economies and develop cooperation in conditions of sanctions, President of Russia Vladimir Putin said in his video address to participants in the Forum of Russian and Belarusian Regions.

"Russia and Belarus are doing their best to ensure the stable operation of their economies and their immunity to the negative impact of sanctions. It goes without saying that achieving success in this matter would be difficult, or even unrealistic, without a close region-to-region partnership," the head of state said.

Belarus is the top partner of Russia among the CIS countries and fourth one in the world in terms of the trade volume, the Russian leader said. "Last year, our trade increased by 12% to exceed 3 trillion rubles. This positive trend continues to strengthen; in January-April of this year, mutual trade increased by another 11%," Putin noted.

"Exports to Russia from Belarus increased by over 70 billion rubles [$815.4 mln - TASS], because machinery and equipment, food, chemical, textile and other products that were previously sent to the West are now being sent to Russia," the head of state stressed.

"With Russia’s support, a number of Belarusian regions started implementing new import-substitution investment projects worth 80 billion rubles [$931.9 bln - TASS] in industries such as mechanical engineering, machine tools, microelectronics and a number of others. A full cycle of competitive high-tech manufacturing is being created," Putin added.