Union between Belarus and Russia Remains Russia’s Foreign Policy Priority

Recently it has again become fashionable in “circumpolitologistic” circles to “bury” the Union State. Some pointed to certain contradictions in the area of mutual trade that were called “milk”, “sugar”, etc. wars by an unknown “muckraker”. Others alleged that the Kremlin was promoting other integration initiatives on the post-soviet area, e.g. the CSTO and EurAsEC. Some people emphasized that now that the European Union had invited Belarus to participate in the initiative “Eastern Partnership”, Minsk would live watching the reaction of Brussels.

Recently it has again become fashionable in “circumpolitologistic” circles to “bury” the Union State. Some pointed to certain contradictions in the area of mutual trade that were called “milk”, “sugar”, etc. wars by an unknown “muckraker”. Others alleged that the Kremlin was promoting other integration initiatives on the post-soviet area, e.g. the CSTO and EurAsEC. Some people emphasized that now that the European Union had invited Belarus to participate in the initiative “Eastern Partnership”, Minsk would live watching the reaction of Brussels.

The chorus of opponents of Belarusian-Russian integration wasn’t daunted by the fact that the President of Belarus almost every week stressed the special status of relations with Russia, the willingness to cooperate even more closely. At the same time, Russian leaders avoided reaffirming Russia’s commitment to integration with Belarus. More than that, some high-ranking officials of the Russian government were cracking far-from-being-politically-correct epithets upon Minsk, which, however, didn’t prevent the parties from carrying out painstaking, sometimes barely visible for an average man work aimed to develop production partnership, mutual trade, cultural and scientific cooperation.

Current week, in this regard, can be considered symbolic. Dmitri Medvedev has exposed “conspirologers” who too hastily foretold the impeding breach of relations between Minsk and Moscow. The President of Russia has not only given a press conference for Belarusian mass media that was dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the Union State formation (though it’s not yet clear why there were no Russian journalists at such an important event), but has also made a number of political declarations. “It is true that the Union State is being formed at probably a slower pace than we expected. But I would like to emphasize that the set of institutions, the set of rules, the level of integratedness of our economies, the degree of consistency of our political action in this document [On the Union State formation] is much higher than if we were just partners”. Dmitri Medvedev urged to “delegate some real responsibilities to the Union State”. “We should try to achieve a higher level of economic integration, to uniform trade rules, to exclude some restrictive decisions and conflicts thereupon,” said the head of the Russian Federation.

Thus, the attitude is specified most explicitly and does not tolerate any speculations or interpretations.