You're reading: Lukashenko: Ukraine would be welcome to join Customs Union

The Supreme Eurasian Economic Council will consider applications to join the Customs Union from Kyrgyzstan and Armenia at a planned meeting on Wednesday, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday.

The council, which will meet in Minsk, would also like Ukraine to join the Customs Union, Lukashenko said during a meeting with the chairman of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Executive Committee, Sergei Lebedev.

“We have quite a hard task today – in a couple of days there will be a meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State and the day before an economic forum of the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space where fundamental issues will be discussed. This may be the way that other CIS countries follow as well, at least we are suggesting it to former Soviet republics, especially Ukraine,” Lukashenko said.

“Kyrgyzstan and Armenia wish to join our troika,” he said. “That’s a problem that we will raise on October 24 as well.”

“Minsk is always fertile soil for negotiations on more extensive mutual integration between countries in post-Soviet space,” Lukashenko said.

“And not only in post-Soviet space either. I think there will be a time when we have a dialogue on the integration of integrations,” he said, explaining he was referring to the hypothetical future construction of ties between ex-Soviet republics, on the one hand, and the European Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and individual countries in the east and west, on the other.

The agendas for this week’s meetings had been agreed, Lukashenko said. “We would have been able to raise more serious issues as well, but we can’t guarantee we would have had a consensus,” he said.