MINSK, 24 May (BelTA) – The most important thing for Belarus and Russia is to develop competences in the field of high technologies. President of Russia Vladimir Putin made the statement during expanded negotiations with Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko in the Palace of Independence in Minsk on 24 May, BelTA has learned.
Vladimir Putin remarked that after the latest presidential election in Russia and the formation of the new government it was necessary to have an expanded-participation meeting with Belarusian colleagues in order to identify the nearest milestones of mutual development.
The Russian head of state mentioned investment cooperation in the sphere of high technologies as one of the most important directions of bilateral cooperation. “We should certainly focus primarily on priority avenues of our cooperation. And first of all, those priority avenues are certainly high technologies and everything related to them. There is no doubt that future belongs to them,” the president said.
In his opinion, Belarus and Russia have accumulated rather good potential in this sphere. “During narrow-format talks [with the Belarus president in Minsk] we said that the most important thing for us is to look for priority avenues in the field of high technologies and help each other develop these competences,” Vladimir Putin said.
This area is even more topical in the modern day and age considering the sanctions enforced against Russia, Vladimir Putin noted. By the way, the number of sanctions against Russia exceeds the number of sanctions enforced against any other country – about 16,000. “There is no doubt that they create certain problems. We see it and feel it. But they also create certain opportunities for development for us,” the Russian president pointed out. “We are promptly recovering the competences we’ve lost at some point. And we are creating the competences that we didn’t have but need. Certainly, it is possible to create them in a most efficient manner by pooling our efforts, by working together. One of the most important tasks is to look for these areas, for these cooperation avenues and create the synergy that we all need.”
