MINSK, 8 December (BelTA) - The presidents of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation signed the Union State Treaty 25 years ago. The archival footage of Aleksandr Lukashenko's visit to Moscow on 7-8 December 1999 was published by the Telegram channel Pul Pervogo, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko was welcomed at the airport by Vladimir Putin. Current Russian leader was Prime Minister of Russia then. Accompanied by a motorcade, the Belarusian president arrived at the Kremlin, where he met with his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin.
On 8 December, the heads of state put their signatures under the treaty which became a defining document for the development of relations between the two countries.
The first results were not long in coming: in nine years, from 1999 to 2008, the trade between Belarus and Russia increased fivefold (from $7 billion to almost $35 billion), and the number of Russian regions with which Belarus cooperated increased from 6 to 88.
We recently talked about how Aleksandr Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin see the future of the Union State in BelTA's YouTube project “After the Fact: Lukashenko’s Decisions”. It shows the archival footage and narrates even more about the integration of our countries.
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