Russian-Belarusian trade turnover hits record $43B

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - Russian-Belarusian trade turnover reached a record $43 billion last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

Speaking at a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Aleksandr Lukashenko in Moscow, Putin said the possibilities of bilateral cooperation are increasing.

"Combining our efforts, we create a certain synergy -- on the one hand, your opportunities in the field of industry, and on the other hand, the needs of our market and additional efforts from Russian enterprises, engineers, even scientific schools.

"All this is developing very effectively in some sectors, and we hope that it will give a good result -- both for Belarus and for Russia," Putin said.

For his part, Lukashenko said Minsk fulfilled all of its security agreements with Russia, adding that Western countries failed to contain the development of Russia and Belarus in the IT sphere.

Not all issues were solved, but the work is ongoing, he stressed.

He said Russian companies ordered services worth more than $300 million from IT companies in Belarus.

Western nations have imposed sanctions on Russia and its ally Belarus over the war in Ukraine, which is nearly a year old.

The two neighbors are formally part of a "union state" and have been in talks for years to move closer together, a process that has accelerated in recent years.