Russian and Belarusian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Alyaksandr Lukashenka have held a meeting in St. Petersburg. It opened the official part of the Belarusian leader’s two-day visit to Russia. Novaya-Europe lays out key statements from the meeting.

Vladimir Putin:

• Russia’s international reserves “are at a very decent, very good level. The unemployment rates are low. Generally, all these key numbers give us grounds to believe that we will do confidently and calmly this year in any case and will show good growth numbers”.
• Ukraine’s personnel losses during the counter-offensive have already exceeded 26,000 according to the Russian leader. Putin noted that even though the counter-offensive had begun it “failed” nonetheless.
• Foreign mercenaries are suffering “significant losses due to their stupidity”. “The public of the countries, whose governments send people today to the active combat zone, should also know what’s happening there,” Putin added.
• Putin reported record-high numbers of destroyed foreign-made military vehicles in the past 24 hours. “We have likely not destroyed so many foreign [vehicles] in one day. The enemy deployed units that were fully equipped with foreign hardware,” he said.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka:

• “Wagner fighters are starting to stress us out. They want to go west: ‘Let us!’ I tell them: ‘Why do you want to go west?’ They also add quietly…Because we are in control of what’s happening. ‘Well, we will go on a tour of Warsaw and Rzeszów.’ I keep them in the centre, as it was agreed. Belarus would not want to relocate them there, because their mood is quite bad.”
• The Belarusian leader once again failed to show where the country would be attacked by Ukraine. He did present a map that allegedly shows that Polish troops have been redeployed near the borders of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. “One Polish brigade is now stationed 40 km away from Brest, while another one is located around 100 km away from Grodno,” Lukashenka said.
• The talks of Ukraine’s admission to NATO is nothing but a “smoke screen”. The West seeks to grant Western Ukraine to Poland. “They want to cut off Ukraine’s western regions and give them to Poland. This is a fee for Warsaw’s active participation in this operation against Russian troops. The Americans support this,” Lukashenka noted.
• If Ukraine is “dissected into parts”, Lukashenka intends to support Western Ukraine. “The separation of Western Ukraine from the rest of the country, dismemberment of Ukraine, and handover of these lands to Poland are unacceptable. And if the people of Western Ukraine need it, we will definitely support them. I ask you to discuss this issue and think it out,” he said.