Number Of Belarusians Who Received Humanitarian Or Relocation Visas Revealed

In 2022, people are leaving Belarus more actively than in 2021.

In 2022, people are leaving Belarus more actively than in 2021.

In total, from September 2020 to May 2022, about 650,000 Schengen visas were issued to Belarusians.

40,000 Belarusians received visas over Poland Business Harbor — for the relocation of IT businesses and IT specialists — alone. Poland has issued about 35,000 humanitarian visas, a Polish diplomat told Nasha Niva.

In total, Poland issued 340,000 visas. 310 thousand more were issued by other Shengen countries.

“At the same time, the number of people who applied for humanitarian visas in the spring of 2022 is greater than in the autumn of 2020. The war with Ukraine was a bigger catalyst than the repressions of 2020. There is a huge burden on the diplomatic staff, as there are many applications from Belarus,” the Polish diplomat explained to us.

“The outflow of people is ongoing, we see it by the situation on the real estate market. According to the results of transactions in Minsk in March 2022, the average price per square meter decreased compared to March 2018. An even more eloquent indicator is the collapse in the price of renting apartments both in Minsk and in the regional centers of Belarus.

The number of vacant apartments is growing, the demand is low. Frankly, this shocks me, I have never seen such a situation on the rental market in my life,” said a real estate agent working in Minsk.

The man believes that renting is simply more responsive to demographic dynamics. If nothing changes, then in the coming months we will see a significant, perhaps even to the levels of the early 2000s, fall in real estate prices in the secondary market, he considers.

There are no exact statistics on how many Belarusians left the country. Not everyone who receives a visa ends up abroad. At the same time, many Belarusians moved to non-Schengen countries: Georgia, Turkey, Montenegro. Armenia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 2022 also became destinations for migration of Belarusians for the first time.