Context: In June, the temperature in Pinsk reached 40.4 degrees, breaking a temperature record and making it the hottest city in Belarus. That’s almost the same as Barcelona, Spain, where the record is just 0.1 degrees higher. June was the hottest month on record across all of Western Europe. In Germany, temperatures soared to almost 42 degrees, and in France, they hit over 44℃. The extreme heat caused an increase in mortality. In France, for example, there were about 2,000 excess deaths in June. This has reignited the debate within European society about the pros and cons of air conditioners.
On July 6, 2026, in the CTV program Voprosy Ot Blondinok, Andrei Mukavozchyk contrasted Belarusians with Europeans. He described Belarusians as people with access to air conditioning and Europeans as victims of the green agenda.
“But that’s no big deal — we’ll get used to it.Europe, on the other hand, will suffocate. Because air conditioners have long been considered luxury items there due to the ridiculous green agenda. As a result, EUnionists are dying by the thousands, but no one feels sorry for them. Because, for the European Union, the principle of ‘better to melt than give in’ matters more. But we’ll manage just fine. As always, without fuss or noise, calmly and sensibly with the air conditioner running constantly,” said Mukavozchyk.
Indeed, the European Union is discussing the impact of air conditioners on energy consumption and urban heat. Air conditioners consume a lot of electricity and release warm air into the environment, further raising the temperature in urban areas. One of the alternatives proposed is a centralized air-cooling system that uses cold water. However, this does not mean that air conditioners have become an unaffordable luxury in Europe.
To verify Mukavozchyk’s claim, we compared the share of apartments available for sale and rent in different capitals that are equipped with air conditioning*. For comparison, we examined cities with climates similar to Minsk’s, such as Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, and Moscow, where air conditioning was not considered necessary until recently. We also studied the capitals of two countries located in warmer climate zone: Rome and Paris.
Berlin stood out immediately: air conditioners were the least common there. In apartment rental listings, air conditioning was mentioned in fewer than 1% of cases. Across both rental and sale listings, it was mentioned in an average of 1.6% of cases.
Minsk ended up near the bottom of the list, too. Air conditioning was mentioned in an average of 9.6% of apartment rental and sale listings. This share is higher than in Berlin and Paris, but lower than in Prague, Moscow, Warsaw, and Rome. For comparison, such listings accounted for 8.6% in Paris, 14.7% in Prague, 15.3% in Moscow, and 18.4% in Warsaw. Among the capitals surveyed, Rome came out on top: about 53% of the listings there mentioned air conditioning.
In other words, our study does not support the claim that Belarusians have better access to air conditioning than Europeans do. Attitudes toward air conditioners indeed vary from country to country. However, Minsk did not rank first among the surveyed capitals. Conversely, it lagged behind most of the cities in the comparison in terms of the percentage of listings with air conditioning.
*For comparison, we used apartment sales and long-term rental listings available on July 12, 2026 in seven capital cities: Minsk, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Warsaw, Prague, and Moscow. For each capital, we compared the total number of property listings on specialized real estate websites with the number of listings that mentioned air conditioning or could be filtered by that feature. For Berlin, we used ImmoScout24 and Immowelt. We reviewed 8,644 rental and 11,959 for-sale listings on ImmoScout24, and 4,351 rental and 8,562 for-sale listings on Immowelt. In Paris, we examined 6,496 rental listings and 23,474 sales listings on Logic-Immo; in Rome, 4,550 rental listings and 20,955 sales listings on Immobiliare.it; in Warsaw, 6,548 rental listings and 18,693 sales listings on Otodom; in Minsk, 1,462 rental listings and 6,885 sales listings on Realt.by; in Prague, 4,027 rental listings and 4,934 sales listings on Sreality; and in Moscow, 26,514 rental listings and 89,701 sales listings on Cian. We then calculated the proportion of such listings for rent and for sale separately, and derived an average figure for each city.
