General information:
Embaixada de Belarus
brazil@mfa.gov.by
Endereço: SHIS QI 7, Conjunto 9, Casa 17 – Lago Sul
Brasília – DFCEP: 71615-290
Tel.: (61) 3543-0481
Fax: (61) 3543-0469
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe.
It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the
west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Covering an area of 207,600 square
kilometres and with a population of 9.4 million, Belarus is the 13th-largest and the 20th-
most populous country in Europe. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is
administratively divided into seven regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city.
Until the 20th century, different states at various times controlled the lands of modern-
day Belarus, including Kievan Rus, the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire. In the
aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for
legitimacy amid the Civil War, ultimately ending in the rise of the Byelorussian SSR,
which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the
Polish-Soviet War, Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the
borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second
Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland. During
World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its
population and half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the
post-war years. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the
United Nations, along with the Soviet Union.
The parliament of the republic proclaimed the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990,
and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence on 25
August 1991. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander
Lukashenko was elected Belarus’s first president in the country’s first and only free
election post-independence, serving as president ever since. In 2000, Belarus and
Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, forming the Union State.
Belarus is a developing country, ranking 60th in the Human Development Index. With
an efficient healthcare system, it has a very low infant mortality rate of 2.9 (compared
to 3.7 in the UK). It has been a member of the United Nations since its founding and
has joined the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, the OSCE, and the Non-Aligned Movement.
It has shown no aspirations of joining the European Union but nevertheless maintains a
bilateral relationship with the bloc and also participates in two EU projects, the Baku
Initiative and the Eastern Partnership. Belarus suspended its participation in the latter
on 28 June 2021, after the EU imposed more sanctions against the country.
