Minsk Welcomes Putin with Anti-Russian Protests :: Charter'97 :: News

Yesterday the Russian president Vladimir Putin arrived in Minsk in order to engage in the session of the Supreme state council of the "Union state", which was supposed to take place in the afternoon. Yesterday all Minsk police were operating in an emergency regime. They stopped traffic on two main prospects of Minsk to ease movement of the presidential cortege.

Activists of the Belarusian opposition marked this event by an anti-Russian action, the goal of which was to “demand Vladimir Putin to bring his apologies for his proposal to split Belarus and make its regions the constituent parts of Russia”. Yesterday the protesters stood for a while in central Minsk, trampling on Russian flag and tearing Russian money. In some places, which cannot be easily accessed, they hang national white-red-white flags and now the law-enforcers are trying to bring them down.

Today the relatives of the missing Belarusian oppositionists will pass over to Vladimir Putin a petition with a plea to help investigate into these crimes.

“Kommersant” was told in the press-service of the Belarusian president, that the two incumbents rendezvoused yesterday in an informal surrounding and will resume today talks in a face-to-face format. According to the deputy head of the Belarusian FM information department Andrei Savinyh, Lukashenko and Putin will discuss most poignant issues of the union states construction, economic cooperation and a range of key problems of international politics.

The presidents will possibly return to what they discussed back in summer, namely the rotation of the top CIS officials and clarify economic positions of the two states. Lukashenko will expectedly inform Putin that OSCE mission’s technical personnel have already resumed work in Minsk and will plead with Putin to uphold his demand to the EU leaders on lifting the entry ban to EU and USA.

One cannot rule out that they will also concentrate on the formation of the “union” information space in connection with the cessation of broadcasting on the territory of Belarus of the Russian radio stations “Mayak”, “Golos Rossii” and “Yunost”, as well as the announced transformation of “Culture” and RTR programs.

Belarusian FM reports that the sides will pay special attention to the tactics and strategy of the “union state’s” construction. They will also approve the “union” budget for the year 2003, pass concrete decisions in the trade-economic, scientific, military and social cooperation.

Apart from the formal approval of the "union" budget (3bln rubles) they will also debate on the future cooperation in gas sphere. Today in Minsk they will approve and ratify the common fuel-economic balance, envisaging the supplies to Belarus of 18,5bln cubic meters of Russian natural gas, 15,5mln tons of oil and 5,5bln kilowatt of electric energy. In late December Belarus has already signed deals with “Gasprom”, “Itera” and “Novofininvest” on gas supplies in the year 2003. Russia may well demand from the Belarusian side the fulfillment of their commitments on the privatization of central gas pipelines.