This past spring, Alexander Lukashenko faced an unexpected crisis: Belarus ran out of potatoes. The shortage hit more than just dinner tables. Belarusians eat more potatoes per capita than any other nation and so the dearth carried symbolic weight, like Greece running out of olives or Italy of pasta.
As posts about bulba vanishing from shop shelves flooded social media, Belarus's leader blamed producers for chasing export profits instead of selling domestically. He ordered farmers to grow "enough potatoes for both us [Belarus] and Russia", advised Belarusians to eat them only twice a week at most and to cultivate their own crops, as he, a former Soviet farm director, claimed to do himself. "Why are you whining? . . . Just plant two furrows and harvest two sacks," Lukashenko said in televised remarks.
But as prices of the country's "second bread" rose 10 per cent between January and March, public discontent could only be partially stifled. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared taken aback when, during a meeting with business leaders in late May, an aide mentioned that Belarus had "run out of potatoes". "Run out?" Putin asked with a puzzled smile. "What is this?"
For decades, Belarus's economy has mirrored Russia's. Despite Belarus having very little crude of its own, its exchange rate and state revenues respond to swings in oil prices, with refined products among its top exports. Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Belarusian GDP declined in tandem with its neighbour's.
During the 31 years of his dictatorship, Lukashenko -- an undeniably shrewd political survivor with an animal instinct for self-preservation -- became adept at manoeuvring between Belarus's patron state Russia and the western powers to whom he periodically promised democratic reforms in the 2000s.
It was the protection of Russia, however, that allowed him to keep tightening his grip -- crushing dissent, expelling diplomats and rigging elections. "If it weren't for Putin, he would be long gone," Sergei Tsikhanouski, an exiled opposition leader recently released from prison, tells the FT. It is a conviction shared by many analysts.
When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Minsk abandoned its official policy of neutrality. Belarus became Russia's main supporter in its war, serving as a launch pad for the invasion and playing a role in the abduction of Ukrainian children. Lukashenko even agreed to host nuclear weapons, despite years of insisting he would never do so. "Lukashenko is effectively bringing Belarus to its knees before Russia," says Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the wife of Sergei and an exiled politician whom Belarusians opposed to Lukashenko regard as the legitimate president. The few remaining ties to the west were severed.
Initially the Belarusian economy took a sharp hit, contracting by 4.7 per cent in 2022, in line with the decline in Russia as sanctions took hold. But then it rebounded at a pace unseen for over a decade, on the back of fresh demand for goods from Russians and cash injections from Moscow.
In both 2023 and 2024, Belarusian GDP expanded by about 4 per cent. "The war has become a blessing for Lukashenko," Tsikhanouskaya says. "He is making serious money off the Ukrainians' blood."
Yet as the war has dragged on, the potato shortage has been just one of the problems mounting for the Soviet-style economy. Lukashenko has struggled to get a grip on high inflation and there is a scarcity of workers. In the first half of 2025 GDP growth slowed to 2.1 per cent, though it remains well above the prewar level.
As a result -- and with international attention fixed on Russia as the greater threat -- Lukashenko is attempting to seize an opening, eager to show that Belarus is not merely Putin's pawn. As part of that process, a number of political prisoners have been released.
"There's a popular myth that he has no sovereignty at all -- that he has even less authority than Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and is content with it," says Ryhor Astapenia, head of the Belarus Initiative at Chatham House. "That's not the case. At times, Lukashenko's room for manoeuvre has been broader, at others, like in 2020, it nearly disappeared. But he's never stopped wanting to widen that space."
But it is unclear if his offers to help heal rifts with the US will be enough to convince western leaders to ease sanctions -- especially with opposition figures either in exile or still in jail.
For Lukashenko, analysts say, maintaining sovereignty is as crucial as keeping strong ties with his larger neighbour. "Lukashenko wouldn't be a dictator if he were willing to share power -- with anyone, including another country," says Artyom Shraibman, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the biggest shock to the Belarusian economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the months afterwards, hundreds of companies and state-run organisations pivoted to a war footing, supplying Russia's military with everything from ammunition to microchips, armoured vehicle chassis, uniforms, backpacks and stretchers.
Among them was the Legmash factory in Orsha, a small town near the Russian border, which quickly moved from making wire and cast-iron pilaf rice pots to producing ammunition for howitzers and Grad multiple rocket launchers, according to BelPol, an association of former security officials opposed to Lukashenko. Russia has relied heavily on these types of weapons in Ukraine.
"We can't be weaving bast shoes forever. We need to make serious products," Lukashenko declared during a Legmash visit, shortly after placing it under the control of the state. The EU and US have both sanctioned Legmash.
Belarus has also benefited from a surge in civilian demand from Russia, where the exit of foreign brands has left gaps in the market. "The situation in March 2022 gave us a lot of [business] leads," Murat Shagildzhov, the owner of Swed House, a home goods store renowned for selling products near-identical to Ikea's, told a local newspaper. He, like many others, saw a "real opportunity to step in". In 2023, Swed House opened its first store in Moscow. "They even have the [famous stuffed toy] shark!" one customer wrote in a review.
Wages in Belarus have surged across defence-linked and civilian sectors as employers scrambled to meet demand. A 32 per cent jump in incomes since the start of the war, along with falling interest rates, has fuelled a property boom in the absence of other dependable investment options.
But one of the most intractable problems is a lack of workers. Even according to official data, Belarus's population has fallen by more than 250,000, or 2.5 per cent, in the past five years, down to 9.2mn. In reality, just the number of people who left may be up to 600,000, or about 10 per cent of the workforce, analysts say.
Belarus currently has roughly 50 times more vacancies than the number of officially registered unemployed. While not all potential workers are captured in the statistics, the gap is stark.
The Belarusian population has been shrinking since independence from the Soviet Union, but never as rapidly as after the 2020 election. That year, many believed the Belarusian regime was nearing its end. The opposition coalesced around a wave of new voices, chief among them Tsikhanouski, the freed prisoner and former advertising producer who was arrested after his YouTube blog gained a mass following.
When Lukashenko put him behind bars for 18 years, the opposition rallied behind his wife, Tsikhanouskaya, a political newcomer who stepped in to replace her husband.
The official results of the election, with Lukashenko declaring himself the winner with 80 per cent of the vote, have not been recognised by most western countries and enraged many Belarusians. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. Lukashenko responded with an unprecedented level of brutality. The security forces tortured, beat and humiliated thousands of protesters. Several were killed, including eight who died in custody, according to Viasna, a human rights group. Over a thousand remain in prison, while hundreds of thousands have been forced into exile.
But Lukashenko stayed -- thanks to Russia. Immediately after the election, Putin congratulated the Belarusian leader and recognised his legitimacy as president. He formed a special Russian police unit, announcing it was ready to be deployed if the situation in Belarus "spins out of control". In September 2020, Putin granted Lukashenko a $1.5bn loan on top of the financial backing Moscow has provided for years.
The economy held up, but its problems have accumulated. In an attempt to address the worker shortfall, Lukashenko struck a deal with Pakistan in April 2025 to accept up to 150,000 migrants. During a televised government meeting he told viewers: "There's another option: have children -- three, four, or better yet, five."
Inflation, which almost doubled in 2022, peaking at 18 per cent in that July, has emerged as another problem. To contain price growth, in 2022 Lukashenko imposed a ban on price increases for hundreds of goods -- the toughest economic controls Belarus had seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"He and his circle must have lived well under the USSR, so they remembered everything -- except the empty shelves," says Lev Lvovskiy, academic director at Beroc think-tank.
Large-scale inspections by the state control committee swiftly followed, along with dozens of criminal cases against shop owners. One businessman in the Mogilev region was prosecuted for putting suluguni cheese on sale at a price just a few kopecks (less than 10 cents) higher than the day before.
Many business owners opted to play a game of cat and mouse with the state. Creative workarounds included selling cucumbers and tomatoes together as a "salad" and stuffing salo (pork fat) inside a loaf of bread and marketing it as a sandwich. Prices for each item were regulated individually, but not in such combinations. Another loophole was exporting as much as possible, mainly to Russia, where prices were several times higher, which failed to ease domestic shortages in many crops, including potatoes.
"Pricing is the main pillar of the contract between the authorities and the people. We have to endure!" Lukashenko lectured officials in televised remarks.
The state quickly began to crack down on these inventions. The price control decree, which initially was "just a single sheet of A4 paper", according to Beroc's Lvovskiy, has evolved into several volumes as more and more products have been added.
Potato exports were banned in late 2024, but producers resorted to labelling good-quality potatoes as rotten and shipping them out anyway.
"Officials are constantly running around putting out fires and adjusting the price regulation system. But as soon as they plug one hole, another opens," Lvovskiy says. "The negative consequences are piling up."
In Minsk, some have started to question Lukashenko's position with Putin. Tsikhanouskaya says her office has been receiving signals from Lukashenko's circle, alarmed by the deepening alignment with Russia. "They realise it's a highly unreliable arrangement," she says.
Turning to China offered a way to diversify without provoking the Kremlin. But while Minsk and Beijing share a degree of political alignment, it is no real alternative: for one, trade still runs through Russian territory, and meaningful co-operation remains elusive, says Shraibman of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Lukashenko has had little choice but to return to "the usual cycle" of manoeuvring between Putin and the west, a senior western diplomat says. While he was reluctant to engage with western leaders, probably due to a mix of internal calculations and pressure from Moscow, late last summer the mood in Minsk shifted.
Around the same time, from his prison cell, Tsikhanouski sensed change was afoot. In August, a representative of Belarus's prosecutor-general's office visited him in prison, asking him to sign a pardon request, which he refused.
According to the western diplomat, Lukashenko began seeking "some kind of rehabilitation and sanctions relief, including having the national airline fly commercial routes again". He may also have wanted spare parts and servicing for the country's aircraft fleet, the diplomat added. "We made it clear that . . . releasing political prisoners was the price of entry to any talks."
A European analyst specialising in the region says that representatives of Lukashenko's administration had repeatedly invited him and several other experts to Minsk, a sign of Lukashenko's eagerness to engage with the west.
In January, shortly before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, Tsikhanouski had another unexpected visitor: Roman Protasevich. The opposition blogger, who began co-operating with the regime after Lukashenko forced down his Ryanair flight in 2021, arrived with a new message. "We're working with the Americans on a big prisoner swap. I have a list of 30 political prisoners, and my job is to get all of them out," Tsikhanouski recalled him saying.
Since Trump's inauguration, Lukashenko has met with US deputy assistant secretary for eastern Europe Christopher Smith five times, he said in an interview with Time magazine. In June, a visit by the US presidential envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, to Minsk led to the release of Tsikhanouski, who was driven at high speed to the Lithuanian border with a sack over his head.
According to a western diplomat, Lukashenko, eager to reassert himself internationally as more than just a Kremlin proxy, was "looking to make a gesture".
"Lukashenko hasn't been recognised for five years, so public meetings at this level are very important to him," Tsikhanouskaya says. "He wants to feel important."
As Trump pushes to broker peace between Moscow and Kyiv, the timing is convenient. Lukashenko has offered himself to the Americans as a coach for dealing with Putin and occasionally acts as a go-between, according to his Time interview.
"People who hadn't even uttered the word 'president' since 2020 now want to talk," Lukashenko said in early July. "They are discussing global affairs with your president -- that's already something. It means they respect [his] view".
Belarus's opposition fears that Lukashenko's newfound status risks sending a false signal of change when nothing of substance has shifted.
"Fourteen people were released, and dozens were jailed," Tsikhanouskaya says of her husband's release and the near-simultaneous arrests of people associated with the 2020 protests. As of the end of July 2025, 1,184 political prisoners remained behind bars, including the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.
"Lukashenko is an experienced politician -- he's been playing both sides, Russia and the west, for years," says Tsikhanouskaya. "He's doing the same now, trying to create leverage for himself, not for all Belarusian people. This practice must end."