NOVO-OGARYOVO, February 17. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko are set to discuss economic and military cooperation and security issues at their meeting on Friday.
"As we have agreed, we will dedicate most of the time to preparations for a broader meeting with our government colleagues <...> and, as usual, talk about the whole range of our relations. That concerns security issues, military cooperation, but what underlies everything is economy," Putin said as he started the meeting with Lukashenko.
He mentioned increasing trade between the nations: It reached a record of more than 43 billion in the dollar equivalent since last year.
"And the main thing that makes me very happy is that we <...> are enhancing the capabilities in the area of industrial cooperation, first of all," Putin said. He said that thanks to efforts made by Lukashenko much of the Soviet heritage in that area had been preserved and then "was developed positively."
"And we can use the results of this development today, and moreover, by combining efforts, we create a kind of synergy. On the one hand, there’s your potential in the field of industry, and on the other hand there are the needs of our market and additional efforts on the part of Russian enterprises, engineers, our scientific school. All this is developing very effectively in some industries, and we hope that it will yield a good outcome for both Belarus and Russia," the Russian president said.
The work to strengthen the Union State also helps further economic development, Putin added.