Reuters
President Vladimir Putin on Friday said political pressure from the West was accelerating Belarus's integration with neighbouring Russia, which has been proceeding on and off for more than two decades. "Unprecedented political and social pressure from the so-called collective West is pushing us to speed up the unification process: together to minimise the damage from the illegal sanctions, to make it simpler to master the output of required products, to develop new competencies, to expand cooperation with friendly countries," Putin told a bilateral forum. The two Slavic neighbours signed a Union Treaty in 1997 that was intended to restore some of the close ties broken by the collapse of the Soviet Union.