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Alyaksandr Lukashenka, during a meeting with Sverdlovsk region Governor Denis Pasler, offered assistance with oil refining, hinting at Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries.
“Today there is plenty of frenzy on the part of our opponents, who are putting oil refining enterprises into an abnormal state. We have two modernized plants — the ambassador knows this well — and we are ready to lend a shoulder at any time when needed. If your region needs assistance and support in this regard, inform the ambassador, Boris Vyacheslavovich will brief us. We will try to help you just as we are helping all of Russia today,” Lukashenka said, according to his press service.
It should be noted that representatives of Lukashenka’s administration had previously said Belarusian oil refineries were working with Russian partners under tolling arrangements.
During the meeting, Lukashenka also spoke, as usual, about growing trade turnover. According to him, it reached $930 million last year, while in the first quarter of this year it had already increased by 3% to nearly $224 million, of which Belarusian exports accounted for $157 million. The Sverdlovsk region mainly receives liquid crystal devices, lasers, cheese and cottage cheese, ferrous metal products and cosmetics.
“Understanding the scale and the volumes both you and we can produce, a billion is simply a passing figure for us. It is only a matter of time before we can even double this trade turnover,” Lukashenka said.
He also emphasized industrial cooperation.
“Industrial cooperation is the future foundation of our development and relations between Belarus and Russia. We are ready to expand this cooperation in terms of industrial integration. There are good examples of cooperation.
When Western companies, American and others, left our market and the Russian market, new opportunities opened up for us. We are also ready to work in this direction,” he said.
Lukashenka also touched on the topic of import substitution. In his view, there have already been noticeable successes in this area.
“I think we need to rely on ourselves. These so-called sanctions have shown us that we must focus on our own capabilities, engage in import substitution and other areas in order to create our own products. I am pleased to hear that domestic aircraft are appearing, including civilian ones, not to mention the military-industrial complex, which has seen very serious development in your country.
And this, in turn, pulls us along as well, because from repairing equipment we are now beginning to produce armored vehicles and aircraft, and our shipbuilding industry is developing too. Not in terms of repairs, but in creating modern systems and modern machines,” he said.