Belarus is open for ‘real’ integration, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said during Thursday’s meeting with Mikhail Myasnikovich, Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission. The politicians were discussing the further development of the integration projects.
“We are, as always, committed to real integration, not coercion to integration (a new term has emerged in the union – ‘coercion to integration’). Weirdly, it began with coercion of Belarus to integration. You understand what I mean,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenka.
According to him, the Belarusian side pushed for the two states’ integration even in the days of the late Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.
“We are supporters of integration, real integration, without any enforcement. We got that real integration going as far back as during Yeltsin’s rule. If we grew rich, especially Russia, things got messy. In may, we are up to sign the integration strategy to run until 2025. We must propose a meaningful strategy, if we want to build our union,” the presidential press service’s Telegram channel reports.
As a recent sociological survey by the Belarusian Analytical Association shows, over the past year the number of supporters of the union with Russia has decreased from 60.4% to 40.4%.
