Tenth Anniversary of the Union State Mirrored by the World Press

Tenth anniversary of the Union State has evoked responses from a number of foreign information services and agencies. The reports were for the most part of information type, describing the event and citing the statements of Belarus’ and Russia’s leaders concerning the jubilee.

Tenth anniversary of the Union State has evoked responses from a number of foreign information services and agencies. The reports were for the most part of information type, describing the event and citing the statements of Belarus’ and Russia’s leaders concerning the jubilee.

The website of the international news agency “BBC” has put up an article covering not only the anniversary of the Union State but also political and economic aspects of Belarusian-Russian relations. In particular, the author of the article is interested in the forthcoming meeting of the Supreme Council of State: “The central issue of the forthcoming Council of State is topical and nitty-gritty: discussion of joint actions aimed at overcoming the consequences of the global financial and economic crisis as well as measures to deal with the balance of payments situation” (“BBC”). Noting certain disagreements between Belarus and Russia in political and economic aspects, it is emphasized that “the union between Belarus and Russia functions almost impeccably in military and technical as well as defence areas”. On the whole, criticizing the process of union formation for non-fulfillment of some provisions of the union treaty, the author denotes some integration success alleging the words of State Secretary of the Union State Pavel Borodin about significant progress in implementing union programmes: “About 26 thousand enterprises work under union programmes; 5 million jobs have been created. All this is the result of work carried out by Belarusian, Russian and Union State officials”.

Publications in Lithuanian press («Diena.lt», «Kauno diena», «Klaipeda») are quite similar. The key-note – “for the last 10 years Belarus and Russia haven’t managed to form a full-fledged Union State”. “Many politicians and experts doubt the viability of the Union State as there is too much talk about integration and not enough action as both states are pursuing just their own objectives,” writes the author. However, in spite of all drawbacks, there are some positive tendencies: “There is a union parliament which is formed by 50 deputies from each party. There is a budget and although it’s small, 4.5 million people are working to implement the programmes financed by the national treasury”. Talking about failures in union formation, the author notes that “Belarus and Russia have different democracies; in addition, Minsk and Moscow are lacking mutual trust”.