Yury Vorobyov headed the Federation Council delegation.
Vitebsk was the venue for the 94th plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Belarus-Russia Union. Russian senators headed by Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Yury Vorobyov took part in the meeting. Ahead of the session, the senators laid flowers at the Three Bayonets memorial in Vitebsk.
The meeting participants focused on the Parliamentary Assembly’s efforts to preserve memorials and military burial sites in the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation and to preserve the memory of history. During the discussion, they decided that the 2024 Union State budget would allocate funding for the restoration of monuments dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, Yury Vorobyov noted.
According to Yury Vorobyov, another high-priority issue on the agenda of the Parliamentary Assembly’s session was a report on implementing the 2023 budget of the Belarus-Russia Union. In their reports, auditors from the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation and the financial oversight agency of the Republic of Belarus noted that it was advisable to use the 2023 union budget allocations more effectively. The participants also suggested drafting the 2024 union budget in a two-stage process, with the first being a substantial review of matters requiring urgent attention. “There are plans to hold a preliminary discussion on the most topical union programmes (under conditions of sanctions pressure) at an expanded meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly Council involving ministers of finance from Russia and the Republic of Belarus. This primarily concerns programmes for developing the agro-industrial sector and cultural-humanitarian interaction. The event is to take place in September 2023, and the Union State budget will, as usual, be finalised in late 2023.”
Speaking at the Government Hour, part of the 94th session, Russian Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelyev and his Belarusian counterpart Alexei Avramenko reported on collaborative Belarus-Russia efforts to create a joint transport system of the Union State and to facilitate its operation. Russian and Belarusian deputies voiced a number of proposals for improving the system of railway rates and developing high-speed routes that would make it possible to ensure the mobility of Russian and Belarusian citizens within the Union State, Yury Vorobyov added.
The next, 95th, session of the Parliamentary Assembly will take place in the winter of 2023 in the Russian Federation, the Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council noted.