About Belarus and Emigration

The image is illustrative in nature

Catastrophe awaits Belarus if Lukashenko holds on for another two or three years!

And it's very important for this to be known — not only by those of us who oppose this obscurantism, but also by officials within the system. You are driving the country into an abyss. And at the head of this train — the engineer — is Lukashenko.

We constantly hear claims from the regime about "stability" and "the economy adapting to sanctions." However, if you set aside the current windfall from a neighboring state's military orders and look at the long-term trends, a picture of the most severe systemic crisis opens up before us.

Belarus is in a phase of exhausting the basic factors of economic growth — above all, human capital. And within the state's current model, the country has no internal resources to pull out of this nosedive. But an important reserve for development today remains the forced emigration that Lukashenko contemptuously refers to as "the fugitives."

Let me break down this dynamic using numbers and facts. The main constraint on any long-term growth is demographics. And here Belarus has reached a historic low. Based on recent years, the country's total fertility rate has fallen to ~1.2, against the 2.1 needed for simple population replacement. The annual number of births has broken a historic low — around 54,000 children per year. For comparison: in the mid-1990s this figure exceeded 110,000. The country is losing 40,000–50,000 people annually to natural population decline.

But the destruction of the demographic structure is most vividly seen in the example of Minsk. The capital, which historically compensated for the natural decline of the regions through an influx of young people, has itself become a depressed area. In a city of two million, fewer than 10,000 children are born per year, and the death rate exceeds the birth rate by almost a factor of two. Think about that — twofold! 2 million residents, and only 10,000 babies born per year in the capital.

Why is this critical for the economy? In 15–18 years, the generation entering the labor market will be physically half the size of the group retiring. The share of the population above working age is rapidly growing. By 2035, there will be more than 65 pensioners and children for every 100 working people. Under such conditions, a pay-as-you-go pension system is mathematically unsustainable without a continuous increase in budget subsidies.

The second factor is an institutional and economic dead end. International expert institutions estimate Belarus's potential GDP growth at 1–1.5% per year. That's a level of protracted stagnation, cementing a growing lag behind the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Belarus's economy has run into three structural barriers:

• First — a labor shortage and falling productivity. The shortage of personnel has spread across all sectors: from industry and healthcare to IT. But trying to compensate for the shortage of workers through administrative wage increases, without growth in labor productivity, only fuels inflation and drains enterprises' working capital.

• Second — technological and market mono-dependency. The reorientation toward Russia and the break with Europe have turned Belarus into an appendage of its eastern neighbor. The country has lost access to Western equipment, technology, and potential loans.

• Third — the dominance of an inefficient state sector. State enterprises continue to absorb subsidies and preferential loans, redistributing resources in favor of unprofitable production at the expense of suppressing the private sector.

Given this structure, external labor migration from Central Asian countries will not save the situation: Belarus cannot offer competitive wages in hard currency or clear legal guarantees.

Now let's look at the flip side — the Belarusian diaspora that has formed since 2020. The authorities calculated that pushing opponents abroad would bleed civil society dry. In reality, what happened was a process of forced export of human capital, which in emigration has not just been preserved but capitalized. By the most conservative estimates, 600,000 Belarusians — 6.4% of the country's population — now find themselves outside the country. These are not abstract numbers; this is a specific cross-section of society. And the sooner Lukashenko goes, the sooner we'll be able to realize the scenario I want to present to you now.

According to the National Bank of Poland, the average age of migrants from Belarus does not exceed 40, with the overwhelming majority being active people under 45. Half of all Belarusians in Poland are under the age of 34. The employment rate among our relocated compatriots exceeds 65–70%. About 60% of Belarusian citizens in Poland have higher education.

The image is illustrative in nature

Thousands of Belarusian businesses have relocated and been re-established in Poland, Lithuania, Georgia, Germany, and the USA. Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians are, right now, gaining direct understanding of how European justice, the banking system, and Western technologies work. Those whom the regime's cheap propaganda calls "fugitives" are, from an economic standpoint, accumulated development capital held abroad.

When the current model exhausts its resources under the pressure of the demographic deficit and shrinking external subsidies, Belarus will face a question of survival. The current bureaucratic apparatus will have problems with personnel and a financial cushion to carry out structural reforms. The country's revival will require the fulfillment of three key tasks, where the diaspora has an important role to play:

1. Attracting capital and financial stabilization

For macroeconomic stabilization and reforms, Belarus will need direct investment and loans. The diaspora will become a guarantor and bridge for attracting international aid, private capital, and the return of assets moved abroad.

2. Institutional and personnel transition

We won't have to reinvent the wheel. Over the years abroad, pools of experts have formed — lawyers, economists, managers — ready to implement reforms step by step.

3. A demographic and technological "ricochet effect"

Repatriating even 30–40% of the specialists who have left, in the first years after a change of regime, will provide a rapid technological leap forward. This means the return of the IT sector, an influx of young families, and, as a result, a turnaround in the depressed trends in the labor market.

We need to stop viewing emigration solely as a tragedy and a loss. In the context of long-term history, it is a forced preservation and multiplication of human capital. The authorities have created a system inside the country that is incapable of reproduction — not demographically, not economically, not technologically. The death rate being twice the birth rate in Minsk is the final diagnosis of the model of state that Lukashenko has created. The dictator is destroying our nation. He is the worst ruler in the entire history of the Belarusian people — he is destroying the people.

The real potential for Belarus's modernization today lies, in part, outside the country as well. And our task is not simply to wait for change, but to shape its architecture, strengthening ties between business, expert communities, and international partners. Belarus can be saved and restored. And a key driver of this process can be, among other things, that very human capital which is today being tempered and growing in exile.

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