Lukashenko Has Invented a Life-Support Machine for Agriculture
- Admin of the NAM
- Apr 17
- 4 min read
On 16 April, Lukashenko signed a decree "On Simplifying the Procedure for Providing Property to Agricultural Organisations." In practice, this decree authorises the transfer of movable property — machinery and equipment — to agricultural organisations for free use, without the prior consent that was previously mandatory.
If translated from official bureaucratic language into plain speech: the dictator has effectively legalised the forced seizure of assets from functioning enterprises for the benefit of a dying agricultural sector.
Previously, transferring property — a tractor, a truck, spare parts — from a factory to a collective farm was a complex procedure: economic justification was required, depreciation had to be paid for, and a stack of permits obtained. Now all barriers have been removed.
The most egregious provision is the right to transfer assistance "regardless of financial results." This means a factory may be running deep losses, have no money for wages, yet it is obliged — or "entitled," which in a dictatorship amounts to the same thing — to hand over its machinery to a collective farm.
The permission to write off the value of transferred assets against "additional capital" or "retained earnings" is a mechanism for concealing the real losses of the donor enterprise. On paper the factory may appear stable, while its fixed assets — its actual property — simply evaporate.
Free servicing: Agricultural organisations are no longer required to pay for the maintenance and repair of what they have been given to "use." In other words, the factory hands over a truck and is also obliged to repair and fuel it at its own expense, receiving nothing in return.
What is the catch?
This is legalised feudal tribute. The word "entitled" in the decree is a trap. In Lukashenko's system, it means that the chairman of any district executive committee will show up at the director of any halfway-viable enterprise and say: "The decree exists? It does. Got a spare MAZ truck sitting around? Hand it over to the 'Path to the Cliff' collective farm — or you'll have problems." This is voluntary-compulsory de-kulakisation of industry.
This is economic cannibalism. Instead of reforming agriculture and making it profitable, the regime has begun devouring other sectors. Industrial enterprises — already suffering from constant interference by Lukashenko's officials and a chronic lack of investment — will now be stripped of their machinery and equipment. This is a path to the degradation of both the factory and the collective farm — which will quickly destroy the equipment anyway, since it is "someone else's and free."
This is the destruction of shareholder rights. For joint-stock companies, this decree is a death sentence for whatever remains of corporate governance. The opinions of shareholders — where these are not the state — no longer mean anything. The assets of a company into which people invested money can be transferred free of charge to some loss-making state enterprise on a phone call from above. This is the final death of the investment climate.
This is a direct road to corruption and mismanagement. Granting state bodies the authority to decide on "sponsorship assistance" without obtaining corresponding approval is a blank cheque for the uncontrolled squandering of state property. When the transfer of valuable assets requires no accountability and no approval, a bottomless pit opens up for grey schemes and falsified records.
The result: agriculture on a ventilator.
This decree confirms what we said in our analyses of BNBK and Bellakt: the agricultural sector of Belarus is bankrupt. There is no longer money in the budget for direct subsidies — it is being consumed by debts to China and the security apparatus — so the dictator has decided to switch to a system of "barter in kind."
The debt burden is only intensifying: the country's external sovereign debt stands at around 17–18 billion dollars, while total external debt exceeds 38 billion dollars. 2026 is one of the peak repayment years: in this year alone, the authorities plan to draw up to 4 billion dollars from reserves to service and repay debts — with no possibility of refinancing through new loans.
Lukashenko has simply permitted one group of drowning people — the factories — to hand their life jackets to another group of drowning people — the collective farms. In the end, everyone goes to the bottom. But in the short term, it will allow the fields to be "sown" and a picture created for television. This is not "simplification of procedures" — it is legalised looting that delivers the final blow to the country's industrial capacity in order to sustain an agrarian myth.
To this looting is added a bitter irony: the country that the dictator calls "the breadbasket of the region" is rapidly losing its food sovereignty. While factories surrender their last assets, Belarus is increasingly purchasing from Russia what it is supposed to produce itself.
In 2025, imports of Russian pork into Belarus reached a record 131,000 tonnes — up 32.4% — covering nearly half of all Russian exports of this meat. The pig population in Belarus itself fell by 3.4% over the past year, and in the Vitebsk region it collapsed by a factor of one and a half. The situation with vegetables is no better: in 2025 Belarus became the largest buyer of Russian cucumbers, purchasing more than 17,000 tonnes — nearly 70% of all Russian exports — and leads in purchases of canned vegetables. In the first months of 2025 alone, imports of agricultural products from Russia grew by 20%, exceeding 1.1 billion dollars.
This is the true outcome of "simplification decrees": domestic production is being hollowed out, while the "agrarian myth" is sustained on imported crutches — paid for out of Belarusians' own pockets, while their factories are stripped of machinery for the benefit of empty collective farm hangars.
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