Official website of the President of Russia

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Alexander Lukashenko: We agreed to have a brief discussion in expanded format of all the formal and general issues before us.

I know that there are always some issues in our relations that you put point blank before us, and we are therefore ready to discuss any of the different aspects in our relations.

Dmitry Medvedev: This is all the more so as there are always practical matters of great importance for developing our relations.

When I looked through the documents for our meeting I noticed that our trade turnover is on the increase despite the difficulties on the international financial markets the foodstuffs market, and this is a very good sign.

Our trade turnover grew by 65 percent over the last four months – a very good result. We need to keep up this pace. I think this is a very good start for developing our trade and economic cooperation. There are other issues too, but the economy is nonetheless defining for our countries’ development. I think we could talk about this today.

Alexander Lukashenko: This is probably Russia’s highest growth in percentage terms…

Dmitry Medvedev: Yes, I think so. This is an increase of two-thirds, and we are not talking of a small figure. Our trade came to $26 billion last year, and that is a big turnover and a good result.

We need to do all we can to keep these figures rising and maintain the trend. We also have political objectives and we will discuss them too, of course.