Belarus in 2009

Belarus in 2009

Area: 207,595 sq km (80,153 sq mi)
Population (2009 est.): 9,658,000
Capital: Minsk
Head of state and government: President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, assisted by Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski

In 2009 Belarus achieved mixed economic results as it struggled to deal with the world recession. On January 2 the official currency, the Belarusian ruble (zaichik), was devalued by 20.5% against the U.S. dollar. Inflation hovered around 9–11%, and GDP dropped by 0.5% over the first nine months of the year. Export of heavy transport vehicles to Russia fell by 55.3% between January and August, and trade with Russia declined by more than 40% overall. On October 28 the government abandoned its regulation of retail prices other than for “socially important products” such as milk, meat, salt, and sugar.

The country’s complex relationship with Russia overshadowed other events. In May Russia refused to provide Belarus with the remaining $500 million of a $2 billion loan that had been negotiated in 2008. On June 6, after Belarus had held talks with the EU on dairy exports, Russia instituted a ban on all Belarusian milk products—a move that had a deep impact on Belarus, which sells 95% of its dairy exports to Russia. The ban was eventually lifted on June 17, but not before Belarus had expressed its anger by skipping a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Moscow, at which it was scheduled to take up the rotating chairmanship. Belarusian Pres. Alyaksandr Lukashenka also maintained that his country would not be pressured by Russia into recognizing the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

On July 31 Lukashenka did participate in a CSTO meeting in Kyrgyzstan, but he refused to sign documents creating a collective rapid-response force to meet regional security threats. He eventually signed in October and committed 5,000 troops to the force. On September 18–29 a joint Russian-Belarusian military exercise called Zapad 2009 was held in Belarus that involved some 12,500 soldiers, about half of them Russian; the controversial exercise simulated a response to a NATO attack on Kaliningrad. Russia also provided funding and expertise for the construction of a nuclear plant at Astravets in Belarus’s Hrodna region.

Belarus moved notably closer to the EU. On February 19 EU High Representative Javier Solana visited Minsk, and Lukashenka made his first European trip after the EU’s lifting of a travel ban on him and other government officials when he traveled to Rome for a meeting on April 27 with Pope Benedict XVI. In mid-September Lukashenka made a highly publicized visit to Lithuania, where he declared that Europe’s policy of isolating Belarus had failed.

On May 7 in Prague, Belarus was accepted as a member of the EU’s Eastern Partnership project (along with Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine), and Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Syamashka attended the inaugural meeting. The goal of the project was to promote economic integration and enhance political links between EU border countries.

A nationwide census was held on October 14–24. The results of the accounting were expected to be released in February 2010.

David R. Marples