Meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State

Mikhail Mishustin and Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Turchin held a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State following which a number of documents were signed.

Opening remarks by Mikhail Mishustin

Opening remarks by Alexander Turchin

Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, colleagues. Mr Turchin, Mr Glazyev, and everyone who has come for this meeting to Moscow, welcome to the House of the Government of the Russian Federation.

I am pleased to welcome the participants in the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State in Moscow.

A meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State chaired by the presidents of Russia and Belarus will be held later this month. Our main objective today is to ensure thorough preparation for the upcoming meeting of our leaders.

President Putin mentioned on several occasions that trade and investment exchanges within the Union State are expanding, as do multifaceted business contacts and cooperative ties, and proper conditions are being created for stable and sustainable growth of our respective economies. All of that has been achieved primarily owing to the joint and coordinated work of the governments of Russia and Belarus to implement the Union Treaty provisions.

Today, we can state that most of the objectives planned for 2024 and 2026, primarily in industry and agriculture, as well as in energy, transport and logistics, the tax and customs spheres, science, education, culture, and many other areas have been accomplished.

We continue to build up mutual trade, which amounted to nearly 4 trillion roubles over the first 11 months of 2025.

We are expanding industrial cooperation as well. We are implementing 26 integration projects to strengthen independence from foreign suppliers across various sectors. These include the automotive industry, agricultural machinery manufacturing, microelectronics, and optics. We are actively working together on machine-tool production and also cooperating in the aircraft and shipbuilding sectors.

Much attention is being paid to personnel training. Ahead of today's meeting, a new intergovernmental agreement on the operating conditions of the Belarusian-Russian University was signed. This is one of the leading educational and research centres, with around 4,000 students. The signed document enshrines its status as an interstate educational institution and introduces a unified level of scholarship support. Students will continue to master in-demand professions to the highest standards.

Today we will also consider decisions that will further contribute to forming a common socioeconomic space. It is proposed to grant Russian and Belarusian enterprises the opportunity to obtain the status of a "Union State product" for their products. At this stage, this applies to a number of items, including machine tools, buses, lorries, and microelectronics. There is no doubt that this list will be expanded.

The key prerequisite is that industrial products must be manufactured jointly, using materials and components from both countries. Companies manufacturing such goods will gain access to additional support measures and preferences from both Russia and Belarus. Consumers, in turn, will clearly understand that this high-quality product was made in the Union State.

We are also continuing joint work to improve transport connectivity. This is important for passenger convenience, strengthening people-to-people contacts, and creating new cooperative links.

Today we will also discuss how regular cross-border commuter rail services should be organised between neighbouring regions of Russia and Belarus.

It is envisaged that certain categories of citizens in our countries will be entitled to free travel along the entire route of the train, and substantial discounts will apply to some other categories.

Our citizens actively travel between both countries. The number of foreign visitors wishing to familiarise themselves with our culture and traditions and to visit historical sites is also growing.

To unlock this potential in full, a Union State tourist information centre will be created. It will be located in historic central Smolensk. This will help attract tourists and develop and promote joint in-demand tourism products.

Colleagues, friends,

The integration of Russia and Belarus within the Union State in many ways serves as a benchmark for joint work in other multilateral formats, including the Eurasian Economic Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Together, we are creating conditions for direct interaction between citizens, entrepreneurs and enterprises, for improving people's quality of life and the prosperity of our states, and, of course, for strengthening ties between the fraternal peoples of Russia and Belarus. This is also a critical area of our work. I trust that today's meeting will contribute to this in every possible way.

Thank you. I am pleased to give the floor to my colleague, Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Turchin. Please, Mr Turchin, the floor is yours.

Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Turchin

Alexander Turchin: Thank you very much. Mr Mishustin, Mr Glazyev, colleagues.

First of all, on behalf of the Belarusian delegation, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you, Mr Mishustin, and to your colleagues for the hospitality, continued readiness to discuss Belarusian-Russian cooperation, and the high level of organisation of today's meeting.

Today we will review our performance and define our strategy for the future through the prism of the 30^th anniversary of the Treaty Establishing the Union between Belarus and Russia, which laid the foundation for the Union State , which we mark this year.

Importantly, the Union State has become a reality having gone through stages of formation and hardening, it has proven its viability, resilience and effectiveness.

We are confidently moving along an upward trajectory of our integration, not merely maintaining momentum but accelerating it. This is because it responds to the expectations of the peoples of our countries and contributes to improving their spiritual and material well-being.

Thanks to the presidents of Belarus and Russia, who act as the driving force behind these processes, we have made significant progress in many areas.

Russia is Belarus's principal partner both economically and politically.

I think we can set modesty aside and state that our governments, too, are working in a coordinated manner and delivering results.

In 2025, Russia strengthened its status as Belarus's key partner. Around 60 percent of all attracted foreign direct investment comes from Russian investors. At the same time, Belarus is also significantly increasing its investments in the Russian economy, and at an even faster pace.

We are also seeing growth in mutual trade. In 2025, the foreign trade between Belarus and Russia increased by 5.6 percent. Trade in services is growing at an even faster rate.

A solid pace of rapprochement has been achieved, and a comprehensive legal framework for economic integration has been created. It is now important not to undermine what we have achieved and not to put up new barriers.

The potential for economic growth is evident above all in the following areas.

First, it's industrial cooperation and joint implementation of innovative projects. This will generate added value, ensure the utilisation of production capacities, deliver economic returns on invested funds, create opportunities to invest in new projects, and ensure independence from imports, and technological sovereignty. The ultimate goal is national security and an improvement in people's living standards.

In furtherance of this area, we are today considering two strategically important, interlinked documents: on the Union State product and on the establishment of the Union State Committee for Standardisation and Quality. Their key objective is to protect the Union market and to enhance the competitiveness of their products.

In today's conditions of aggressive competition, the focus on quality becomes decisive at all levels. Our President pays great attention to quality. This is a five-year period of focusing on quality programme, and the State Quality Mark has been reinstated. We very much hope that the adopted documents will make it possible to reach a new level of cooperation within the Union, to build constructive work in the common market, and to avoid the creation of duplicative and excessive production capacities.

Cooperative ties between the regions of Belarus and Russia are highly developed. Take, for example, BELAZ, which is a leading global manufacturer of mining equipment. This is a fully fledged Union State product of world-class, number one in the world. Almost 50 percent of its components are produced in the Russian Federation.

Many good and sound decisions are taken within the Union bodies, but the final result depends on how we approach their implementation. Far from always do we see the high efficiency for our economies that could potentially be achieved.

Within the framework of Union cooperation, the international industrial exhibition, INNOPROM Belarus, was successfully held for the first time in Minsk in September 2025. As you noted, Mr Mishustin, this project is becoming a regular project for us, and we are ready to hold the exhibition again in Minsk in September 2026. We hope that this year participation by Russia's regions and major companies from around the world will be even more extensive, and that we will continue discussions and the search for new solutions in industrial policy.

The second area for further economic growth of our integration includes implementation of the planned tasks on digital transformation. This contributes to levelling institutional conditions for interaction between economic actors, investors and the state. In this regard, it is fundamentally important to accelerate as much as possible and to complete the implementation of measures for the recognition of electronic digital signatures in electronic documents in cross-border information interaction.

Third, the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. This area is very closely linked to the previous one. In the Republic of Belarus, work is continuing to create the Digital Platform for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises information system. As it is developed, digital services and databases from the МСП.РФ digital platform will be gradually integrated into it.

Major Belarusian industrial enterprises have placed orders on the Russian platform for over 100 types of components and materials. About 30 Russian small and medium-sized enterprises have responded to this demand. Commercial supply contracts are being worked on.

Our goal is to create the most comfortable possible conditions for economic actors and enable barrier-free interaction between them.

As Mr Mishustin has noted, within the framework of the Union State the tourism sector is confidently gaining momentum. Thanks to the secure environment that has been created, the absence of borders and transport accessibility, mutual tourist flows are increasing year by year.

At the same time, there is a shortage of infrastructure. Within the Union State, we can stimulate mutual investment in tourism infrastructure, develop support measures for tourism, synchronise the regulation of tourism activities in the two countries, and create and promote tourism products externally.

As has been said earlier, we plan to open a Union State tourist information centre in Smolensk. I believe that in the foreseeable future we will open a similar tourist centre in one of the cities of our country as well.

In addition, as was also noted, three more documents that are required to launch cross-border commuter rail services of the Union State are at a high level of readiness.

Colleagues, the extensive agenda of today's meeting reflects the interest of Belarus and Russia in deepening cooperation, in finding solutions to emerging issues, and in creating new growth points in the interests of our states and peoples.

Thank you. I wish us all productive work.