06 March 2025, 11:45

Lukashenko discusses promising areas of cooperation with Russia

MINSK, 6 March (BelTA) – While visiting the exhibition of the latest Russian unmanned aerial systems in Minsk, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko discussed promising areas of cooperation with Russia, BelTA has learned.

The report to Aleksandr Lukashenko was presented by the so-called Krutoi-Oreshkin group (Head of the Belarus President Administration Dmitry Krutoi and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office of Russia Maxim Oreshkin). Back in 2018, in the capacity of the economy ministers, they led the working group on the Belarus-Russia integration and have since overseen the development of cooperation between the two countries.

“Dmitry Nikolayevich and I were instructed to explore promising areas. We have a long history of relations, our economies are integrated, and our trade is significant. Our key criteria are novelty, innovation, technology, and a possibility to make a certain breakthrough. We selected 10 starting points to begin with,” said Maxim Oreshkin.

Unmanned aerial systems

Speaking about promising avenues of cooperation, Maxim Oreshkin first of all named the development of unmanned aerial systems. According to him, they can be game-changers in many sectors of the economy, including logistics, agriculture and power engineering.

“This is not just the production of drones. These are control systems, monitoring systems, security issues. It would be right to synchronize our actions and work in a single and regulated space. This will be more efficient,” Maxim Oreshkin said.

Platform economy

Digital platforms help increase the supply of Belarusian goods to Russia and related markets. For example, sales of Belarusian products via the Wildberries e-commerce company alone reached Br2.4 billion. The turnover on the domestic market is estimated at Br3.5 billion.

“Any Belarusian producer can immediately gain access to any segment of the Russian market through platform solutions,” noted Maxim Oreshkin. “They do not need to think about logistics, about reaching a specific buyer. They just need to make a quality product and offer it to the consumer,” said Maxim Oreshkin.

Through platform solutions, Belarusian producers will also be able to receive preferential loans, which will allow them to invest in production and increase deliveries to the Russian market.

A platform economy requires new infrastructure and hence huge upfront investment. In Belarus, for example, new logistics centers will be set up. The possibility of building a large data processing center is under discussion.

“Our colleagues are not offering some local supply solutions, but a systemic solution for creating a new-level logistics system,” emphasized Maxim Oreshkin. “In my opinion, this has had a big effect on the Russian economy. We have very low unemployment - 2.3%. One of the reasons is new solutions. A manufacturer from a small settlement in Yakutia, for example, could not enter the Moscow market before: they had to deliver their goods there first and then find a place to sell them. But now none of this needs to be done. You make a product, put it on the digital platform and if people are interested in it, they will buy it from there. The platform takes care of logistics. Therefore, small and medium-sized manufacturers are growing their businesses throughout the country.”

Drive tourism

Maxim Oreshkin said that he had time to travel around different cities, get familiar with Belarusian sights and learn how interesting and rich Belarusian history was.“Everything is so interesting. People are very friendly. Service is of high quality. It is very interesting to walk around and see it all,” the deputy chief of staff of the presidential executive office of Russia said.

In his words, new highways have been built in his country, and now all of Russia up to the Urals can come visit Belarus. “There is definitely something to see here. It is a country with a very rich history,” Maxim Oreshkin said.

“Yes, and it is worth seeing,” Aleksandr Lukashenko emphasized.

“It is very interesting here, rich past and great present. It is necessary for people to travel more. For this it is necessary to create conditions,” Maxim Oreshkin added.

In 2024, the tourist flow between Belarus and Russia amounted to 5 million people. The average duration of trips was about 4-5 days.The countries plan to systematize tourist routes, integrate digital services, develop technical solutions that would make the travel for drive tourists a more convenient and pleasant experience.

Development of railroad connections

The construction of high-speed railroads will help not only to increase tourist flows, but also to improve economic interconnectivity between the two countries. At present it takes more than eight hours to travel between Minsk and Moscow by rail. Thanks to the high-speed railroads, journey time can be reduced to three hours.

“This is literally the first issue on the agenda of our meeting with Putin. I keep saying to him that there is no need to build somewhere far away. There is a railroad, and we need to work further in this direction. This high-speed railroad should run not only to Minsk, but to Brest. We will have it soon. He supports me in this regard,” the president said.

Industrial robots

The use of these technologies will contribute to increased labor productivity. This is especially important in conditions of labor shortage.

“It would be great to involve Belarusian manufacturers and work together. Belarus is a leader in machine-building, we have everything necessary for this. We need to work in this area,” Maxim Oreshkin said.

Data economy

Possible areas of cooperation in the field of data economy include the development and implementation of digital platforms and standards, construction of data centers with possible use of nuclear power, creation of joint research centers in the field of artificial intelligence, harmonization of legislation.

“Here, I think we are underperforming. We need to cooperate more closely in science, in personnel training and research. We need to make more active steps forward,” said Maxim Oreshkin, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office of Russia.

Digital currencies

Belarus has adopted the Concept of the Digital Belarusian Ruble, which elaborates a roadmap for its implementation until 2026. Russian banks, in turn, are involved in the development of their platform.

“It is important to synchronize our work and move together so that the relationship between the digital Belarusian and digital Russian ruble is built at the proper level,” said Maxim Oreshkin.

Digitalization of education and healthcare

In medicine, it is proposed to create a unified digital platform with centralized access of medical institutions to AI-based diagnostic services. This will save doctors' labor, reduce financial costs and the share of misdiagnoses. It is proposed to use the Moscow experience - the MosMedII platform - as a basis.

Moscow initiatives can be extended to education. For example, the Moscow Electronic School platform combines the functionality of a journal, diary, database library and enrollment system.

Advanced training of engineering personnel

Belarus and Russia could also create a joint system of advanced training of engineering personnel. Moreover, cooperation in the field of education between the countries foes way back.

Deepening partnership between technological universities will facilitate the creation of advanced engineering schools, development of programs to increase academic mobility of students, researchers and teaching staff. All this will help raise the training of engineering personnel to a new level.

Another avenue of bilateral interaction is cooperation with the Russian Agency for Strategic Initiatives and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, which are engaged in supporting and implementing projects in business, social security system, education, science and technology.