With the New Year celebration just around the corner, it is time to think about the list of top civic actions in 2012. As a disclaimer, the goal of the list is to highlight achievement and recap success, often...
Belarus started the year 2012 in a rather bad shape. Alexander Lukashenka has been occupying his post for almost 18 years. A dozen political prisoners remained behind the bars. Relations with the West were worse than ever before. The opposition...
The currency crisis of 2011 has revealed the limits of the Belarusian economic model. On the one hand, it became obvious even to the most conservative government officials that changes in economic policy are required. On the other hand, the...
The Belarusian authorities trade the national identity of Belarusians in exchange for economic subsidies from Russia. Constitutional guarantees of equal rights of the two official languages actually do not work. The majority of Belarusians react indifferently to that fact, as...
Oil products trade, Belarus parliamentary elections, business associations, informal education and modernization are among the topics which interested Belarus experts recently. Foreign Domains of Belarusian Parties BDG journalist examines whether Belarusian political parties and movements have websites and how...
650 thousand Chinese will be building an industrial park near Minsk and they have already obtained working visas. Yaraslau Ramanchuk – an ex-candidate for Belarusian presidency – has received this information from his own sources of information. Gazeta.ru, major Russian online media, also mentioned...
On Monday 17 December, Alexander Lukashenka unexpectedly visited Kamvol, a textile factory in Minsk which is struggling with a deep crisis. After that he sacked the director of the factory and the director of Belarusian light industry Bellehpram. As a populist...
The Reality Check is a new initiative which aims to convene regularly a Review Group to contribute to the formulation of a more effective policy towards the EU’s Eastern neighborhood countries. The Review Group includes domestic and international analysts, practitioners,...
On December 19 summits of the CSTO, the Eurasian Economic Community and the Customs Union will take place in Moscow. The agreement on oil supplies in 2013 is expected to be concluded during negotiations in Moscow between Lukashenko and Putin at the end of...
Festival of non-formal education, National Gender Platform approval, discussion of Minsk brand and human rights defenders of the year were among the most notable civil society events in Belarus last week. Festival of Non-Formal Education. On 7-9 December, the 4th Festival...
On 22 November, Alexander Lukashenka met with Putin`s protégé and head of the Gazprom directive board Alexey Miller. During the meeting, Miller presented a program on how Gazprom will develop the Belarusian gas infrastructure and make new investments into the economy. Gazprom...
Post-Soviet mass discourse often portrays Belarus as a country of villagers. A big deal of that comes from the image of president Lukashenka himself. He has been director of a farm in Eastern Belarus before going into high politics and is famous for...
The Belarusian government is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. It finds it more and more difficult to perform its daily tasks without resorting to administrative force. This is the major implication of the unprecedented decree that Alexander Lukashenka signed on 7 December. The...
The number of cases of parents being deprived of their parental rights in Belarus is very high compared to other European countries. On the whole, Belarus brings up more than 25,000 boys and girls in children's institutions of various types....
