Events

22 Jan 2024

Belarus, Russia draft resolution on launching single media company

MINSK, 22 January (BelTA) – A resolution of the Union State Supreme State Council on the creation of a single media company of the Union State has been drafted, State Secretary of the Union State Dmitry Mezentsev told reporters, BelTA has learned.

“We have prepared a draft resolution of the Supreme State Council. It envisages the establishment of a single media company of the Union State that will take over coordination and publication of information in the printed press, on a TV channel and on a website (it will get a priority). The content will go beyond the coverage of interaction in the Union State format to include publications about our history, our plans, our response to pressure, including psychological pressure. We set very exciting, ambitious tasks that the new team will be able to handle,” the state secretary said.

The creation of such a media company has already been discussed for some time, including at the highest level. At the Supreme State Council meeting in the Kremlin in April 2023, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] and I agreed in Saint Petersburg that we need to have a solid media holding company in the Union State. We need to establish this company. It is true, this might be quite costly. But if we want our agenda to be heard (there is something to talk about), we need to create this media holding without piggybacking it on to other companies. We agreed on this. Yet, this cannot be done overnight. After all, it needs funding.”

BelTA reported earlier that Aleksandr Lukashenko and Dmitry Mezentsev discussed preparations for the upcoming meeting of the Supreme State Council as they met in Minsk on 22 January. A draft three-year plan to implement the provisions of the Union State Treaty for the period of 2024-2026 will be submitted for approval to the Supreme State Council.

The previous such document covered 2021-2023 and was implemented in conjunction with 28 adopted Union programs. The main difference between the document proposed to run in 2024-2026 and the document for the period of 2021-2023 is that the former includes a large block of humanitarian, cultural and social issues, while the previous one, together with the 28 Union State programs, primarily focused on the economic component of cooperation, manufacturing, banking and similar areas.