Lukashenko: “Peace-loving” states failed to squeeze Belarus, Russia dry for best minds

“Peace-loving” countries have failed to squeeze out the smartest people from Belarus and Russia, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at the talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 17 February, BelTA has learned.

“I was pleasantly surprised by what the ambassador told me on the way here. According to him, your companies ordered more than $300 million worth of products from our IT specialists. They paid more than $300 million. Everyone was screaming: IT specialists had fled from Belarus and Russia and so on ... Russian placed orders worth $300 million in Belarus alone. And if we take Russian IT specialists, orders will amount to several billion dollars. Thus, ‘peace-loving' countries failed to drive us into a corner so that the brightest minds, as they said, would flee our countries. This means that import substitution is making progress,” the president said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko emphasized that Russia and Belarus had an unprecedented trade in goods and services in 2022: “$50 billion. About $44 billion is trade in goods as you said. The rest are services.”