Facts about Belarus

So, Belarus, it's a country with a population of 9,491,800 people, at least based off of a 2018 estimate. Now, it's ranked 93rd in the world in terms of all countries around the world for population. And within that, about 83% of the people identify as Belarusian, whereas about 8% identify as Russians, and 3% are Poles, and another 2% are Ukrainian. And anything after that is just really classified as other. Because of this, when it comes to the languages of the country, the two main official languages are Belarusian and Russian. Now, one really interesting fact that I found about this is although a lot of people identify as Belarusian, more people, at least from a common sort of thought, is that more people speak Russian than they do Belarusian. Some reports have stated that approximately about 70% of the people speak Russian, whereas I've heard that Belarusian is also only spoken by 23% of the people at home.

Also, within all these people, 53% identify as Eastern Orthodox, where a big percentage of it, about 41%, are irreligious, which is realistically people who don't really identify as a religion. They could be, you know, my agnostic atheists, that sort of thing. And with that, only about 7% of the population identifies as Roman Catholic. So, while we're on the topic of people, we might as well look at the government. For Belarus, it is classified as a unitary presidential republic, meaning that the country has both a prime minister and a president. Fascinating fact, that when it comes to at least the time of recording this video, the current president is Alexander Lukashenko. An interesting part is he took office on July 20th, 1994, and he's not only the current one, but he was the first president of Belarus. He's been doing it for quite a long time. As a matter of fact, this makes him one of the longest rulers in Europe currently. The reason for this is because his position was created when he took office, due to the fact that the constitution was put into effect within a year later.

And why all this? Well, this has to do with Soviet Russia dissolving. When that happened, Belarus became an independent country in 1991, and by 1996, it had formed its own union state. This is also probably why a lot of people speak Russian still because old generations were under the Soviet Union sort of rules, and they had to speak more Russian. I would actually not be surprised if over the years, I mean, hopefully the country remains independent, that more people will speak Belarusian as time goes on. Now, Belarus is not a small country as some may think. As a matter of fact, it comes in at 84th in the world in terms of land size. Within its borders, it contains 207,595 square kilometers of land. And because of that, it has a population density of 45.8 people per square kilometer.

So, this next fact, considering we're on the topic of land, I want to talk about more of the dark sides of Belarus. And this fact, well, it's not really Belarus's fault. The fact I'm referring to: In 1986, when the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, over 70% of the fallout from the accident ended up going into Belarus. As a matter of fact, they say it's affected one-fourth of the entire country and one-fifth of the agricultural land, with about 7 million people and about 2,000 towns being affected by the incident. As a matter of fact, in today's world, it is unsure how many people are, as a matter of fact, affected from the disaster. This also makes chemical and nuclear pollution one of the biggest environmental issues within the country that is estimated to cost 20% of the annual budget of the entire country going towards cleaning up after this nuclear accident.

And within the country, they say approximately about 2,000 square kilometers of land is considered confiscated, closed off land where no one should live. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of controversy around the farming within this country. Some officials have said, "Yeah, these areas are totally safe. They're totally fine. It's not as bad as we thought it was," whereas some are like, "No, you shouldn't be farming there at all." Personally, for me, I feel really bad when I hear about these stories and I hear about the small towns that are currently living in these unsafe sort of zones. And I won't lie, you know, I mean, me on a daily basis, I deal with first-world problems such as traffic or like, you know, my cell phone not working. And it makes me really feel guilty that I even feel bad or angry about these things because this sort of stuff is happening around the world. That's just me though, guys. I just wanted to share that thought.

Either way, I feel that this major disputed controversial topic is going to be something that we're going to get more truth as time goes on. But besides the dark side, let's look at some cool positive facts about the country. Now, did you know that Belarus is considered the Silicon Valley of Europe? Reason is it's because it's got a lot of people working in the IT department. They got a lot of really good experts. As a matter of fact, 38,000 people currently work in the IT department alone as of today. For example, they've created games like World of Tanks and other things of that nature. But one of the biggest reasons for this is because Belarus has a great tax system called the Hi-Tech Park, and this has made a lot of companies just want to move in and start developing there. Because of this, in 2018, it was recorded that the HTTP companies jumped from 24 to 292 in less than 12 years.

So, this fact that I'm going to give you guys right now, this one's one of my favorites, especially after hearing about the dark story of the nuclear contamination. But did you know Belarus is considered a really, really green country? I love hearing that. Firstly, within the capital of Minsk, it's so green that it's got the Minsk Botanical Garden and is considered one of the largest in Europe, coming in at 96 hectares. For Belarus as a whole, 40% of the country is forest. It has what is known as the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Forest, which is one of the last and the largest primeval forests on the planet and home to about 800 bison, which, by the way, that species is near-threatened. So, it's a good thing that they got them. This particular forest is also classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Zone, and it was inscribed in 1979 and it has a total of 385,000 square kilometers in size.

Considering I just mentioned Minsk, I got some really cool facts about it. And let's be real, it's just a beautiful city. Good old Minsk has been around since it was founded in 1067, making it older than Moscow. And it was given town privileges in 1499. As a matter of fact, it's got some really unique names behind it. One thing that I really liked is it's called a hero city, which pretty much means it's withstood a lot of devastation and near destruction several times. Minsk had troops occupying the city multiple times in history. For example, the Russians occupied it in 1655, and the Swedes also occupied it during the Great Northern War in 1708, as well as many other times in history. But one of the biggest was during World War II, where the city was completely leveled. And with that, they had plans to originally rebuild the city 30 kilometers away because of all the ruins. But as we all know, it's where it is now, and it's one beautiful city. Love it.

But back to the country itself, some other things that we should mention is money. Basically, for your GDP purchasing power parity, it comes in at $201 billion. The country has approximately $28.5 billion in exports as of 2017. The top exports are refined petroleum and cheese, which they love. As a matter of fact, you know, the Dutch should watch out because these guys, Belarusians, really love cheese. They love it. There's also fertilizers in the top four exports as well as delivery trucks and much more. Imports come in at approximately $33 billion. It imports a lot of stuff like gas and petroleum as their biggest. There is a balance of other things like cars, scrap iron, apples and pears, and a lot of other things like that.

So, there you go, guys. That is it. That is me looking at the country of Belarus. I mean, I just think it's such a great country. I know I missed a lot of really good facts, and with that, feel free to leave them down there in the comment section below. But you guys have yourself a fantastic day, and I'll see you later. Bye.