Belarusian activists have held the picket ‘For Independence! For our and your freedom!’ at the Russian Embassy in Minsk on Friday.
The picketers collected signatures against the integration of Belarus and Russia and our country’s exit from the Union State.
By the moment, over 13,000 people have signed the petition for denouncing the Union State Treaty, which was placed on the change.org platform by the civil campaign ‘Forward, Belarus!’ several months ago. According to the activists, the treaty of alliance on 8 December 1999 ‘leads to a loss of sovereignty and independence of the Republic of Belarus’.
On September 16, the Russian newspaper Kommersant presented some details of the project of the further integration of Belarus and Russia, which was reportedly agreed by the prime ministers of the two states on September, 6. The integration may be ‘deeper’ than that in the European Union, the article reads.
If the information is anything to go by, the document provides for the partial economic integration at the same level as the EU member states have; in some fields, the integration will be similar to that of a confederation or even federation.
On the same day, president Lukashenka’s press secretary Natallya Eysmant told the Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva that the terms ‘confederation’ and ‘federation’ used in the article were nothing but ‘journalistic cliches’. The independence and sovereignty of Belarus and Russia are ‘sacred’, she added.
By 8 December 2019, the authorities of Belarus and Russia are expected to sign a new agreement on deepening integration.
In late October, Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhei Rumas said that the Belarus-Russia integration program would soon be prepared and handed over to the leaders of the two countries. However, the Belarusian authorities are not going to make public the program signed by the two prime ministers in early September in order to prevent ‘manipulations’.
