MINSK, September 26. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he would meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Kyrgyzstan in mid-October.
"[Putin and I] will meet in Kyrgyzstan on October 15," Lukashenko told visiting Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko.
Also, Lukashenko said he had discussed what he said were major bilateral projects in a telephone conversation with Putin on Monday.
"Yesterday, I talked with the Russian president. <…> I should say we discussed two projects," the Belarusian leader said, adding that these projects would be further discussed at the upcoming meeting in Kyrgyzstan.
Namely, Lukashenko said, he had discussed "the joint production of small aircraft that are in high demand in Russia" with Putin. "We possess the relevant competencies in Belarus, so we proposed building such aircraft (that can land on rough ground outside of airport facilities - TASS) and more actively developing the production of separate components for the Il-96 [cargo plane] and maintenance here in Belarus," he explained.
The other project is to build a second rail link from Belarus to St. Petersburg "so we can ship large amounts of cargo to your ports and serve the entire globe from over there," Lukashenko said.