Under the unfavorable geopolitical situation, strengthening bilateral cooperation between Russia and the Republic of Belarus is of particular relevance. Currently, Russia is Belarus’ key trade partner. Despite serious challenges, sanctions and restrictions, Russian and Belarusian enterprises continue developing cooperation in almost all sectors of the national economy and achieving results. According to the results of the first 11 months of 2022, the historically maximum volume of mutual turnover of goods and services – 45 billion U.S. dollars – has been achieved. Analytical data and expert assessments show that the current environment makes it possible to intensify bilateral cooperation between enterprises of the two countries and bring it to a new level. On the other hand, as experts note, the existing situation may become a source of problems that hinder the potential of such cooperation. This condition determines the topic relevance and the purpose of the work. The research aims to identify the barriers to cooperation between the enterprises of Russia and the Republic of Belarus and develop proposals for their elimination. In order to achieve this goal, we have developed a toolkit, which was used to conduct an expert survey (in-depth interview method) of managers of enterprises of Russia’s region (the Vologda Oblast), cooperating with counterparties from the Republic of Belarus. We carried out the selection of the expert group by means of the documentary method. The heads of six enterprises of the region, whose activities correlate with the structure of the volume of foreign trade turnover between the Vologda Oblast and the Republic of Belarus, took part in the survey. Approbation of the developed toolkit allows identifying certain problems arising in the course of bilateral cooperation: the problem of value added tax refund in the framework of foreign trade operations, the presence of customs restrictions, including on special-purpose products, the negative effects of economic sanctions and others
Keywords
russia, belarus, innovations, development, problems, enterprise, scientific and technological potential, prospects, Russia, Belarus, entrepreneurial sector, interview