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Russia, Belarus make significant headway in building Union State — Putin

The Russian President recalled that 28 union programs were approved

MOSCOW, February 18. /TASS/. Moscow and Minsk made noticeable progress in the creation of the Union State in 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko on Friday.

"Last year was quite productive for us. First, we made enormous headway in the construction of the Union State," the Russian leader said.

Putin explained that Moscow and Minsk had worked hard on it. Thus, 28 union programs were approved.

"Development has been underway on many of these areas for a long time, but in fact, all these 28 programs - we simply updated what we had been planning to do before - adopted a concept of migration policy and the military doctrine," Putin noted.

"In general, loads of work was done," he concluded.

The Russian president pointed out that the rapid economic growth "is most delightful." He noted increasing trade and branded this indicator as "very good."

"It shows that what we are doing in the area of integration yields real results. Behind that are jobs and people’s quality of life and wages. So I believe that we are going in the absolutely right direction," Putin stressed.

Putin offered Lukashenko to discuss all these issues at the talks and thanked the Belarusian president for accepting the invitation and visiting Moscow for this year’s first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.

"We have a lot to discuss and to coordinate our stances on a range of issues," the Russian president said.