On March 23 votes will be cast for over 20,000 seats in regional and local councils in Belarus.  These elections are unlikely to be any more free, fair or competitive than recent parliamentary...

On 22 June, ten years will have passed since the great Belarusian writer Vasil Bykau passed away. Bykau’s works have become regarded as masterpieces of world literature. Foreign publishing companies translated his books into more than 40 languages, and...

Appointing three new university rectors on 28 February, Alexander Lukashenka once again stated that there exists no problem with the Belarusian language at universities. Meanwhile, only 0.2 per cent of university students study in the Belarusian language, according to a recent...

The Parliamentary election of 2012 never had the ingredients to be transformative, but it did offer the chance for the opposition to present a credible platform to the population - and to seek to create space for issues to...

Belarusian authorities do not allow even a minimal level of electoral competition and openly censor opposition candidates in the ongoing parliamentary election campaign. The campaign looks like a staged show in which the incumbent regime only needs to make sure...

The decline in Belarusians' income led to the corresponding reduction of Lukashenka’s rating. However, the regime's opponents' popularity did not grow significantly. The Independent Institute for Social, Economic, and Political Studies conducted a sociological survey in Belarus last month. According...