Lukashenka and Putin to Meet in Late February

Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin will meet in late February. The upcoming meeting was announced by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin at a session of the Union Council of Ministers.

“A meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State, chaired by the presidents of Russia and Belarus, is scheduled for the end of this month,” he said, according to Interfax.

A meeting of the Union State Council of Ministers is being held in Moscow today under the leadership of Prime Minister Alyaksandr Turchyn and Mikhail Mishustin.

Mishustin noted that the main task of today’s meeting is to prepare the session of the Supreme State Council.

The agenda of the Union Council of Ministers includes 14 items, including discussion of the so-called union programs. In addition, the talks cover granting goods from the two countries the status of “Union State goods,” as well as the creation of a fundamentally new structure — the Union State Committee for Standardization and Quality.

“It is proposed to give Russian and Belarusian enterprises the opportunity to grant their products the status of ‘Union State goods.’ For now, this concerns such items as machine tools, buses, trucks, and microelectronics. This list will be expanded.

The main condition is that industrial products must be jointly manufactured, using materials and components from both countries.

Companies producing such goods will gain access to additional support measures and preferences from both Russia and Belarus. Consumers, in turn, will clearly understand that this high-quality product is made in the Union State,” Mishustin explained.

Another issue on the agenda is the launch of cross-border railway passenger services.

“We will discuss how regular cross-border suburban rail passenger services between neighboring regions of Russia and Belarus should be organized.

It is expected that preferential categories of citizens of our countries will receive the right to free travel along the entire route of the train. For some categories, significant discounts will apply,” the Russian prime minister said.

The meeting also addresses work on developing a strategy for forming a common information space and the implementation of a migration policy concept.