Alexander Lukashenko said Belarus is open to Ukrainians and ready to offer them “the same life as Belarusians”: “Please come, Ukrainians. We would be glad to take you in.” A clip of that speech from the opening of the new bridge over the Pripyat River in Mazyr aired on the November 9, 2025, edition of “Azaronak. Directly." Host Ryhor Azaronak weighed in, talking about the many Ukrainians who, as he claimed, moved to Belarus after the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the full-scale invasion:
“More than 320,000 [Ukrainians have moved to Belarus since 2022]. Since 2014, since the start of the fighting in Donbas, there have also been hundreds of thousands.”
Most likely, Azaronak confused the number of crossings at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border with the number of people who actually stayed in Belarus. The State Border Committee reported that 320,000 Ukrainian citizens entered the country after Feb. 24, 2022. But that does not mean they all remained in Belarus rather than moving on — for example, to Russia as a transit route to reach occupied areas of Ukraine or to travel on to other countries. These people could also have simply gone back home.
In addition, 320,000 refers to the number of entries into Belarus, not the number of individuals. The same person could have crossed the border several times since 2022. For example, in 2023 nearly 1 million people from CIS countries entered Belarus, but only 31,000 of them registered with the Interior Ministry’s migration authorities (all foreign nationals must register if they stay in the country for more than 10 days, except Russians, who may remain for a month without registration). A year earlier, 42,000 citizens of CIS countries registered in Belarus. That’s 73,000 over two years. In other words, it would have been impossible for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens to remain in Belarus. What we do know is that more than 2,000 Ukrainians applied for refugee status in Belarus in 2022, and just over 1,000 did so in 2023. That’s a little over 3,000 in total.
As for the start of the conflict — the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — Interior Ministry statistics also show no sign of “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainians. In 2014 and 2015 combined, about 50,000 Ukrainians received temporary or permanent residence permits. Five years into the war, that number had grown by only 25,000, and it has not increased since.
