NOVO-OGARYOVO. Feb 17 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed economic cooperation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at a meeting on Friday.
"As agreed, we will spend most of our time preparing for a meeting with our colleagues from the government in a broad format [...] and, as always, will discuss the entire range of our relations, including security and military cooperation. Still, the economy is the foundation for everything," Putin said in his opening remarks at the meeting with Lukashenko.
Bilateral trade is on the rise, having hit a record of over $43 billion equivalent last year, Putin said.
"The main thing that pleases me very much is that we [...] are broadening capacities for industrial cooperation above all," he said. Much of the Soviet legacy has been preserved and "positively developed" in this area owing to Lukashenko's efforts, he said.
"We can use the results of such development today and, what's more, we create certain synergy by combining our efforts. On one hand, there are your industrial capacities and, on the other hand, there is demand of our market and additional efforts of Russian enterprises, engineers and scientific tradition. All of that turns out highly effective in certain areas, and we are expecting a very good result to be achieved for both Belarus and Russia," Putin said.
The work on strengthening the Russia-Belarus Union State lays a foundation for further economic development, he said.
In turn, Lukashenko said that bilateral trade in goods and services was unprecedented in 2022.
"We saw an unprecedented trade volume in goods and services last year, $50 billion," Lukashenko said.
"Goods accounted for $44 billion, plus there were services," he added.