Lukashenko Wants To Sell Air To Europe
- 20.11.2025, 19:46
The Usurper lives in a parallel reality.
Alexander Lukashenko said that Belarus gives "stinking Europe" air. Whether the air in Belarus is so much cleaner than in its neighbors, Deutsche Welle investigated.
The time is not far when Europe will pay Belarus for clean fresh air, which is formed by the forests and swamps saved in the country. This idea was expressed by Alexander Lukashenko during his visit to the Berezinsk Biosphere Reserve on October 31.
In his opinion, the EU "practically doesn't have it all," while the wind "carries all this good in the form of clean air" there. "And the time will come when this stinking Europe will pay us for taking care of what we have inherited from God," Lukashenko said. At the same time, Lukashenko instructed to develop woodworking production in the Berezinsk reserve.
It's not Belarus giving air to Europe, but Europe giving air to Belarus
Lukashenko's statements about giving air to Europe, chemist and visiting researcher at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (CGRI) Sergei Besarab calls "complete absurdity." But even if we take this statement seriously, it turns out that Lukashenko does not know the basic fundamentals of climatology and geography, known to everyone since school, the expert continues.
"The atmosphere is a dynamic, constantly renewing single system. The air is constantly mixing, its flow is unpredictable. Now it's over the Berezinsk reserve, and an hour passes - and it's already over Smolensk or Warsaw," says Besarab.
The statement that Belarus "gives air" to Europe is incorrect, rather the opposite - Europeans give air to Belarusians, says climate change expert Anna Skrigan.
"Belarus is located in temperate latitudes, and the western transport prevails here. This means that the prevailing number of winds and their frequency, i.e. the number of days with these winds, are north-western, western and south-western winds."
How clean is the air in Belarus?
If one believes the Belarusian state data, the air in Belarus is really clean. According to the Yearbook of the state of atmospheric air for 2024, published by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the general picture of the state of atmospheric air in most industrial centers of Belarus is quite favorable.
"The state of air in the settlements, where automatic stations of continuous measurement are located, the content of priority pollutants was assessed mainly as very good, good and moderate. The share of periods with satisfactory, poor and hazardous air quality was insignificant," the yearbook reports.
According to the data of the Swiss air monitoring organization IQAir, which can be checked at any time on the website, at the time of writing this article, the air quality index in Belarusian cities was estimated as average: in Minsk - 62, in Homel - 58, in Hrodna - 58, and in Brest - 77 (index value: good (0-50), medium (51-100), dangerous (301+)).
It should be taken into account that only data from Brest the monitoring receives from a ground station - the website indicates that it is an anonymous counterpart at 13 Makhnovicha Street. In other cases, it is data "based on modeled information from satellites in the absence of a ground sensor". For comparison, the capitals of Belarus' neighbors have similar data: Vilnius - 61, Warsaw - 66, Riga - 78, and Kiev - 62.
It's impossible to say that the air in Minsk is cleaner than in Warsaw
As Anna Skrigan explains, the air quality assessment is made in accordance with the standards of such measurements, where the air is tested for the maximum permissible concentration of pollutants (MPC). "However, the approach in Belarus differs from the European one, where they use less MAC and more use health risk assessment."
The expert doubts the quality of Belarusian environmental statistics. "Basically, the analyses are expensive, and there is no single analysis that would allow to carry out changes in all the impurities in the atmosphere and make a general assessment of atmospheric pollution."
In addition, it is impossible to say unequivocally that air quality in Minsk is higher than in Warsaw. "Firstly, we have different approaches to measurement. Secondly, there is no integral indicator, and, thirdly, air quality is a local indicator, which depends on many reasons."
With regard to the widespread stereotype that Belarusian forests are the "lungs of Europe," Anna Skrigan explains that European oxygen is "produced" not by Belarusian forests, but rather by swamps. "Forests in Belarus are not in a state of sustainable community when they generate oxygen. Especially if we take into account timber harvesting, more often forests emit carbon dioxide."
The air in Belarus has twice as many emissions as in Europe
In turn, Sergei Besarab refers to the Pollution Index rating of the resource Numbeo, which clearly compares the level of global pollution: according to it, Belarus has an average level of pollution, while in Europe it's low. In addition, the expert points out that, according to the UN Development Program in Belarus, the level of harmful emissions in the country is 130 kg per person per year, while in the EU - 80 kg, that is, in Belarus it's twice as high.
So, according to Sergei Besarab, the air in Belarus is far from clean - old Soviet equipment, no modernization of treatment facilities, there are sulfur oxides, car exhausts - nitrogen oxides. "I think that when Belarusians, for example, from Svetlogorsk or Novopolotsk, listened to Lukashenko, they probably had tears flowing, because the air there is extremely bad. Unlike Europe, which has been investing for decades in the green agenda and minimizing emissions."
In addition, Europe has rather strict standards regarding permissible air emissions that apply to businesses and industry. "Europe is an absolute benchmark in this respect, there is a rigid approach there. In Belarus, everything is non-transparent - somewhere the standards are oriented to Europe, and somewhere they just update the Soviet standards, and there is no explanation where these or those figures come from."
Is it even possible to cut wood in the Berezinskiy reserve?
After outrage that Belarus was "giving" air to Europeans, Lukashenko said that "we must work for ourselves," even "where it is forbidden," and instructed to replicate small-scale wood processing facilities in Belarus. Climate change expert Anna Skrigan explains that the Berezinskiy Reserve is a reference natural area, part of the international system of biosphere reserves, where the primary forests of Belarus have been preserved in pristine condition.
"Any reserve has three zones: in one zone certain economic activities are allowed, the second zone is a transitional zone and the third is the core of the reserves, where any intrusion into the ecosystem is prohibited. And even if logging is carried out in the authorized zone, it is not clear how it will affect the rest of the reserve and the ecosystem, because it affects the hydrology of the territory, the migration of animals, and so on. As an ecologist, I can say that it would be sacrilege, you can't cut down the forest there under any circumstances," Skrigan says.