The Smell of Big Money and Dead Fish
- Pavel Latushka
- Apr 17
- 4 min read
How the Regime is Turning Belarus's Lakes into Family Assets
The dictator's helicopter over the Mogilev region in these April days of 2026 is not simply a routine working trip by a "hands-on manager" to the Paluzh fish farm. It is a signal that the final stage of carving up yet another sector of the country's economy has begun. While propaganda paints pictures of "restocking the nation's waters with fish," a large-scale operation is unfolding behind the scenes — transforming state losses into the personal income of one family.
The last few years in Belarusian fish farming are a textbook example of how glossy presentations shatter against the iron logic of inefficiency. Lukashenko planned a trout paradise — in reality, he is presenting a "goldfish" in a broken trough.
An ambitious target was set earlier: to bring trout production to 5,000–7,000 tonnes. In practice, as of April 2026, output barely reaches 1,000–1,500 tonnes. Why? Because trout is not carp — it requires expensive imported feed, clean water, and high-tech equipment.
Belarusian shelves are 90% stocked with imported saltwater fish, while the domestic share of carp and trout in citizens' diets does not exceed 12%.
The majority of state fish farms have become financial "zombies." They exist only on paper and on subsidies that are instantly swallowed up by debts for electricity and feed.
Many ask: if the industry is loss-making, why has Lukashenko taken it on? The answer lies in a sophisticated asset management scheme. This is not mere mismanagement — it is a strategy.
First, the state uses taxpayer money and crushing loans to build high-tech complexes (such as Paluzh itself). Then a situation of artificial bankruptcy is engineered: enterprises are forced to purchase overpriced and dubious-quality feed from BNBK, direct sales channels are cut off, and social debts are loaded onto them. Once the enterprise has been driven into "financial coma," the "saviours" appear — management structures linked to the Presidential Property Management Directorate or to the family's wallets. The result: the people pay for the construction and the debts, while the family receives a ready-made operation, export flows to Russia, and foreign currency revenue from fish product sales.
A fish processing plant has already been opened near Minsk as part of the takeover of the fishing industry. Its owner, Lyudmila Neronskaya, is a close friend of Lukashenko's daughter-in-law and is connected to the dictator's eldest son, Viktor. Their children attended the same prestigious Minsk gymnasium together. Neronskaya flies to Dubai on a private business jet with Viktor's wife and children. She serves as director of the company "Morskaya Gavan" ("Sea Harbour"), which runs the "Morskiye Sezony" ("Sea Seasons") project in the Vitebsk region and the recently opened complex in Kolyadichi. It has recently emerged that "Morskaya Gavan" has purchased the "Belryba" fish complex in Minsk — 24,000 square metres — along with refrigeration and administrative buildings on Radialnaya Street.
Lukashenko's interest in fish is not about phosphorus in Belarusians' diets. Three factors converge here. First, currency hunger: premium fish is "living currency" on the Russian market. Second, opacity: accounting for fish in closed tanks is an ideal environment for black cash. Third, feudal instinct: in his home region of Mogilev, he wants to create a personal fiefdom where, eventually, every fish will belong to "the clan."
Meanwhile, the industry is suffocating — literally and figuratively. Modern fish farming cannot function without European water purification systems and sensors. Import substitution has failed here completely: Belarusian alternatives work intermittently, and spare parts must be sourced through grey schemes at a 300% markup. As for fish feed, BNBK has never managed to produce a feed on which trout grows as fast as on Danish feed. The result is Belarusian fish that is "gold-plated" in terms of cost price and uncompetitive without budget subsidies.
Where there are state subsidies and murky waters, corruption always flourishes. In recent years the industry has been rocked by scandals exposing the main schemes: premium feed purchased on paper, cheap mixture delivered in practice; mass falsification of stocking volumes; sale of the best fish for cash, off the books.
The meeting at Paluzh is a death sentence for initiative. When handcuffs are threatened for fish die-offs, professionals leave. Only those eager to perform remain — people who understand that the dictator does not need the truth, he needs victory reports.
In a system where a mistake is equated with sabotage, no one will introduce new technologies. Loyalty has become more important than competence. And while Lukashenko holds forth about the bright prospects of Belarusian fish farming, the industry continues to rot from the head down.
Paluzh and the other fish farms today are not national assets. They are future branches of the Lukashenko family business — ones that we have already paid for in full, but whose profits the people of this country will never be allowed near. Fish in Belarus today swims only for those who sit at the top.
When Lukashenko says "We must feed the people fish," what he means is: the people will pay for the factory's construction, then cover its losses through taxes, while the profits from selling caviar and trout flow offshore or into new residences.
The situation at Paluzh is not a managerial approach. It is looting elevated to the status of state policy. The dictator does not engage with loss-making industries to save people — he engages with them only when he smells money. In Belarus today, that smell is fishy.
The dictator has driven fish farming into the same trap as all of agriculture: agrarian feudalism, where a bad harvest earns you prison, and success earns you the attention of the regime's money men, eager to seize a profitable asset. The result: expensive imported fish on the shelves, and plundered fish farms across a country known as "the land of lakes." This is not an economy — it is a simulation of life under the watchful eye of an overseer.
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