Before the anti-government protests that shook Belarus in 2020, a thriving tech-industry existed in the country. Recent events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have shown that a plateau in output is all but assured for at least the next few years. Overall, it appears that the country has suffered from a severe brain drain as talented workers have fled the authoritarian state.

Belarus was once called the “Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe”. From 2005 to 2016, exports of IT services and products grew 30 times over. The share of IT exports in Belarus’s total exports of goods and services increased from 0.16 per cent to 3.25. In 2021 the IT sector was contributing almost a third of GDP growth. However, after the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, the situation changed dramatically.

There is an ongoing "total purge" to cleanse the world of sensitive people capable of love. It is my conscious choice to engage in socio-political art. This is my feeble attempt to make a change.

This year marks the thirty-year anniversary of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rule. While the Belarusian leader has been able to consolidate his power in the country, recent responses to crackdowns on the opposition suggest an uncertain future for the dictator.

The recent prisoner swap with Russia in early August marked the largest East-West exchange since the Cold War. Despite this, little has been said about the absence of Belarus in these agreements. A renewed effort is now needed to help the many political prisoners still held by Minsk.

Since 2020 the Belarusian media field has lost up to ten important independent publications. Some of them did not survive the financial crisis while others were taken over by propaganda or decided to avoid covering politics. The decline in the number of independent media outlets and the difficulty in reaching audiences within the country, where consuming truthful news can result in criminal charges, affects the overall political mood in the country.

In 2023 Belarus ranked 167th out of 180 countries in press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. Since the political protests in 2020, the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka intensified its persecution of the free press. Currently, there are 35 journalists imprisoned on criminal charges, serving sentences in prisons where they face torture and isolation from the outside world and their families. From 2020 to 2023, nearly 600 journalists and media professionals were arrested, according to Press Club Belarus.

The January Uprising of 1863 was the last common struggle for the ideals of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Today, when no existential disputes exist between the independent nations of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus, the memory of 1863 should be a stepping stone to teaching the history of the Commonwealth as a common legacy.

Earlier this year, the presidents of Poland and Lithuania, accompanied by the leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition in exile, celebrated together in Vilnius the 161st anniversary of the January Uprising. This event was fought by the nobility and intelligentsia of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the years 1863-64 against Russian imperial rule.

In spite of their shared desires to challenge the status quo, the Belarusian and Russian oppositions do not always see eye to eye. This is largely the result of a continued assumption that Belarus is uniquely tied to its larger neighbour. The status of Belarusian exiles in the EU today subsequently depends on the recognition of these differences.

The Belarusian experience of exile has left many wounds for those affected. Exposing the trauma caused by separation from home, artist Darya Cemra’s latest exhibition explores the prospect that such pain may never truly heal.

Lithuania’s support for those Belarusians protesting against the Lukashenka regime has become well known in recent years. Despite this, an argument over the centuries-long interactions between the two peoples could possibly threaten this unity.

Building upon the ongoing analysis of the research group "BELARUS-UKRAINE-REGION", which was established at the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw in autumn 2020, and in cooperation with New Eastern Europe, we present a series of sketches depicting the situation in Belarus during the latter half of 2023.

On February 25th 2024, Belarus will hold its first elections since August 2020, which resulted in mass protests for several months. How are the Belarusian authorities preparing for this event and what will be the likely outcome?

In the years that followed the controversial 2020 election – a resounding Lukashenka “victory” of over 80 per cent which bore little relation to the popular support for the challenger Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya – the ruling regime has undergone several serious trials to which it has responded ever more harshly. Its recent measures have included the elimination of the opposition’s media sites, the shutdown of hundreds of civil society organisations and the dissolution of all opposition and several official political parties.

In February 2024, Belarus will hold a parliamentary election, the first contest since the rigged presidential election of 2020. The democratic opposition is barred from participating and has called for a boycott. While the outcome of the election itself is pre-determined, the process is an illustration of the development of a new dualism in the Belarusian political system.

More than three years after the events which initiated a new dynamic in Belarusian political history and significantly impacted changes within the system, the first electoral campaign awaits us in February of this year. While rightfully labelled “elections without choice” by many researchers, it does not mean that they will be devoid of significance. In attempting to analyse and study the Belarusian case, we must agree that the term “Belarusian politics” itself has become dualistic. When discussing it, we often refer to two clearly different dimensions, or at the very least, two different levels.