ASTANA, 4 July (BelTA) – Belarus and Russia will continue discussing a draft agreement on security guarantees. Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maksim Ryzhenkov made the statement as he commented on his meeting with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana, BelTA has learned.
Maksim Ryzhenkov said: “We’ve discussed a number of matters concerning interagency cooperation. We agreed to increase the number of consultations and adjust the joint action plan for the year 2025. We will discuss all of that at a joint collegium at the end of the year. And before that we will have several rounds of talks about security. We are going to discuss the well-known draft agreement on security guarantees. Several more rounds will be held. A [Russian] deputy minister of foreign affairs will come to Belarus. Everything here proceeds as it is supposed to.”
Apart from that, he reminded that the other day the president set a number of tasks before Belarus’ new ambassador to Russia Aleksandr Rogozhnik as well as Head of the Belarus President Administration Dmitry Krutoi, who is a former ambassador to Russia. “I think we will do a good job from the point of view of the political and diplomatic track,” Maksim Ryzhenkov is convinced.
BelTA reported earlier that Belarus and Russia may sign an agreement on security guarantees in December. The possibility was mentioned by Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Galuzin at the latest St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“We pay a lot of attention to matters of ensuring security of the Union State [of Belarus and Russia] by coordinating the development of the bilateral interstate agreement on mutual guarantees in this sphere and by providing assistance to our security councils with the work on the security concept of the Union State. We expect a simultaneous adoption of these documents during the December session of the Supreme State Council of the Union State of Belarus and Russia that will be timed to the 25th anniversary of our association,” Mikhail Galuzin said.
