“It’s all Putin’s fault”: Lukashenko thanked the West
The economies of Russia and Belarus are developing unexpectedly rapidly under Western sanctions
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko stated this today at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The economy in Russia and our Union is not just strengthening, but unexpectedly intensively strengthening. Take inflation, take unemployment. She turned out to be smaller. The unemployment rate is falling. This is good. Well, the ruble is strengthening at a breakneck pace. So that we don't overdo it here. That's why unexpected things happen. Well, this is unexpected for them. We expected this to happen. This is a time of opportunity. And they, without realizing it, pushed us to engage more intensively in our economy,” Lukashenko said.
He said that the government of Belarus has already calculated the costs of the import substitution program.
“The money is very small. I don’t want to name them publicly now, because they are approximate. Well, absolutely ridiculous money. But we will go over the main points where we do not have enough components and other things for good import substitution. I'm not talking about security anymore. We are already doing a good job in the security sector of producing what our joint army that operates here needs.
Therefore, in the economy, we really thank them for giving us an impetus for our own development. We have a huge market, we have resources and technologies. Well, they clearly underestimated what was happening there. They lived by reading their media, and they got inflation... True, Putin is to blame. It’s all Putin’s fault,” Lukashenko joked.
“We will have a serious talk with him,” Putin responded.
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