Opinion: thanks to Union State, Belarus can effectively withstand external challenges
The Union State and other integration formats in the post-Soviet space enable Belarus to effectively withstand external pressure and economic storms – as noted by Aleksei Belyaev, the Dean of the Journalism Department at the Belarusian State University, in his talk with Alfa Radio
The expert recalled that Belarus will celebrate several important dates this year, and among them are the 105th anniversary of the BSSR formation and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the country from the Nazi invaders.
“One of our main public holidays (Independence Day) is connected with those events of 1944, and the country will definitely celebrate this anniversary. This is a landmark event for Belarus, since the victory in that war became a state-forming one: during the Great Patriotic War, Belarusians united as never before, and a spirit was developed that was supported by partisan, underground struggle and all the forces that assisted at the front. The Belarusian people survived the difficult years of occupation and experienced the genocide, and only now we start to fully comprehend and investigate the latter. In the past year, the Prosecutor General's Office was engaged into the collection of new materials, and many publications devoted to the sad pages of that war were released. We remember those terrible years and try to inform on them even more. However, despite the genocide, the most brutal Nazi policy in our territories aimed at the destruction and robbery of the Belarusian people, we survived and stood our ground. We united, and a new political elite was formed from among the partisans. The latter headed the republic and ensured its revival, contributed to the development of industry and agricultural sector, manged to rebuild cities and villages. We will not forget the ideas of creation that were born in the Belarusian people’s souls and further developed into a wide-scale labour movement. There are all reasons to remember them once again this year,” Mr. Belyaev said.
The programme host, Polina Konoga, added that the Union State Treaty is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and she asked the expert to comment on such active integration construction.
“This is already part of our modern history, something that we create with our own hands and at the origins of which there were not our fathers and grandfathers, but ourselves. The path to integration with the Russian Federation was supported by the Belarusian people at the 1995 referendum initiated by the Head of State. Our President is consistently implementing the people’s will, and he did not change the path even in the most difficult years. We see that the policy of integration – which has deep roots – is already bearing fruit. Thanks to the Union State, thanks to the integration processes in which Belarus actively participates in the post-Soviet space, we can withstand the global economic storms today. We see that even attempts to create an iron curtain on the western borders of Belarus produce no results for our opponents. In turn, these steps open up new opportunities for the republic. We have such an ally as the Russian Federation, and we have the opportunity to use both military-technical and resource support within the framework of integration associations (primarily, the Union State), while providing our production facilities, intellectual and scientific resources so that Russia also benefits. We understand that these are bilateral, mutually beneficial contacts, and they help us successfully resist any attempts to impose pressure on us,” Mr. Belyaev noted.
According to the expert, the implementation of 28 Union State programmes is at its final stage, but this does not mean that the process will stop afterwards. “Their implementation is just the beginning of a long path, since new horizons will open up later,” he said. “We will improve our mutual legal field. The Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation are not simply for long: they are forever together. Therefore, the countries will do their best to create comfortable conditions for their citizens. A comfortable living environment for Belarusians in Russia and Russians in Belarus is being created. We can already see many Russian tourists in Belarus, and they actively booked our sanatoriums for the New Year holidays. They – and guests from other countries as well – have very good impressions of Belarus. The visa-free regime has been extended [for Lithuania, Latvia and Poland], and it gives the opportunity to citizens [of these states] to come, see, go shopping and get acquainted with how freely people live in the republic. These are very serious points, and they are shaped by both Belarus’ President personally and the Government. Of course, integration processes with Russia are of primary importance for us, but Belarus is open to the whole world. We do not want to shut ourselves off from anyone. We have always been a hospitable country, and we have never initiated the closure of our borders and the building of a fence.”
Answering the question of what he would say to critics who oppose the Union State, accusing Belarus of allegedly losing sovereignty, Mr. Belyaev stressed, “Aleksandr Lukashenko is a man for whom the concept of ‘independence’ is sacred. Belarus has never and under no circumstances traded sovereignty, and it will not do this in the future. Despite all the attempts of detractors to somehow denigrate the Union State, we see that neither side has actually made an attempt to violate real sovereignty. We witness exclusively co-operation. Meanwhile, many countries – who boast of their alleged sovereignty, who declared that they had left the Soviet Union for the sake of the latter – have forgotten their Soviet past and fallen into terrible dependence, completely losing their subjectivity in the international field. These are the Baltic States, for example, and Ukraine which is completely under external control. So those who are trying to accuse us of something, should primarily look at themselves and find a beam in their own eyes.”
