Towards a dependence with no alternative: Russia’s increased role in the Belarusian economy
Macroeconomic data for the first six months of 2023 confirm Belarus’s steadily increasing dependence on Russia. In the second year of the war, Minsk is paying a high price for its complicity in Russia’s aggression, the regime’s acts of repression targeting its opponents, and its confrontational policy towards the West. This has involved Belarus losing a major portion of its markets in the EU and Ukraine. As a consequence, Belarus’s trade in commodities with the Russian Federation already accounts for around 70% of its total trade; considering that the transport of Belarusian goods (mainly fuels and potash fertilisers) is dependent on transit through Russian ports and railways, Russia’s share in Belarusian exports now exceeds 90%.
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