The Belarusian side has absolutely no intention to retard the integration processes that have started in the Customs Union, but Belarus will strictly follow the agreements its has reached with its partners and will want its partners to do the same, said President Alexander Lukashenko on July 22 during a meeting with Sergei Glazyev, Senior Secretary of the Customs Union’s Customs Commission.

‘Belarus has never been guided by selfish interests while developing the union of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan and while embracing integration, including the integration within the Union State,’ said the Belarusian Leader. It is not Belarus’s fault that ‘not everything, to put it mildly, runs smoothly in our Union of Belarus and Russia’, he said. ‘We do not have sufficient resources, and we never had, to be able to retard the Union of Belarus and Russia. On the whole, the idea behind the creation of [this union] was to show an example to others. But it has been the other way round so far. Therefore, if there is an opportunity to make progress in any other integration projects, Belarus will never hinder this process,’ said Alexander Lukashenko.