On 6 February a Belarusian businessman received 5 years in prison for enslaving a group of Vietnamese whom he had earlier agreed to deliver to the European Union. Meanwhile, the Belarusian government has defined fighting human trafficking as one...
Just before German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande came for negotiations on Ukraine to Minsk, Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei visited Germany. The foreign minister's trip on 5-8 February was just one of numerous steps that...
The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine agreed to hold peace talks in Minsk on Wednesday, 11 February, in an effort to avert a full-scale war in Ukraine. The last German and French leaders to visit Minsk were Adolph...
At the end of January, senior Belarusian officials made statements that threatened to undermine Belarus' good relations with the Vatican, severing ties that the country had worked for years to establish. Aliaksandr Lukashenka and the Commissioner for Religions spoke out...
Last month Belarusian authorities continued their offensive against independent media. An amendment to the media law, in force since 1 January, tightened the state's control over the Internet. Eight days later, the state ordered the confiscation of profits from an independent...
The year 2015 will herald a new presidential election in Belarus, certainly by the fall, and perhaps as early as March. It will be the fifth presidential election since the introduction of a national Constitution in 1994, and will...
On 9 January the Economic Court of Minsk charged the Lohvinaŭ book store with unauthorised book sales and ordered the confiscation of its whole year’s profit. This is perhaps the largest fine ever received by civil society in Belarus. Until...
Belarusians are really beginning to worry about their domestic state of economic affairs more than Ukraine as of late. This is the main result of a December 2014 poll from the Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS) published in early...
On 27 December, Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka appointed Alyaksandr Kosinets as the head of the Presidential Administration. In less than a decade, Kosinets rose from the position of dean of a provincial university to one of the top offices in...
The EUobserver reported last week that Belarus might start talks over a visa-free regime with the EU, citing senior officials from the Latvian EU presidency. Many Belarusians reacted to this statement with expressions of surprise, satisfaction and hope,...
On 19 December, Belarus resorted to an unprecedented step to stop the rapidly unfolding panic on the foreign currency market. It blocked a dozen popular independent web sites, who published news on the growing financial trouble. Previously, the authorities blocked...
The past few weeks have seen an unusual increase of anti-Belarusian activity in pro-government Russian media and blogs. The Kremlin has not yet used its strongest media tools. However, the manner of the attack is in some respects similar to...
On 27 December, Alexander Lukashenka ordered a major reshuffling of the government as Belarus weathers economic troubles and prepares for the 2015 presidential campaign. He appointed a new Prime Minister and his deputies, heads of the National Bank and the...
The Ukrainian conflict has exposed growing ideological differences among Belarusians. When Volha Krapotsina was distributing anti-Russian leaflets in Hrodna, a fellow citizen, who empathised with the Russian side, reported her to the police. In Minsk, while some distributed stickers “We...
