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President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko: Mr Putin,

First of all, let me thank you and your colleagues for this visit and for the support that you have given us throughout the work today at the Eurasian Economic Council.

We were just talking about how today has been a success. We discussed a large number of issues and we probably have still to realise the full impact of the big step – I won’t call it a breakthrough, but certainly a big step – that is the outcome of our work and our discussions today.

After all, we made significant progress on all of the main issues concerning our union’s formation, and most important of all, we moved forward in preparing the Eurasian Economic Union’s principal treaty and outlined its future shape. 

Of course, there is still a lot of work ahead, but we accomplished a lot too, and have made greater progress on the main issues than you or I probably thought possible yesterday. I am therefore pleased that you and all of our colleagues have given today’s work a positive assessment.

I think that our talks will not take too much time because the three or four issues that need sorting out, I would like to discuss them with you and your colleagues in the context of our work today, so as to see the prospects we have and come to a concrete decision.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I agree with your assessment of our work today.

It is true that many issues were settled at the expert level before today’s meeting, but some of these matters were left for us to decide. I am grateful to you that in your work as chairman you showed such tact and consideration in steering us through all of these compromise roads so that we could reach common, agreed and mutually acceptable decisions on practically every issue.

Today’s work was indeed very fruitful, and this was to a large extent thanks to the good organisation, and so I want to thank you very much.

I am very pleased to have the chance now to discuss our bilateral relations.

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