Lukashenko Is Obsessed With Pellets

The ruler's pathetic speech in the Minsk District.

During a working trip to the Minsk District, Lukashenko continued the peace-building efforts he had begun in Turkmenistan. He offered Macron friendly advice on the student protests in France and urged him to be on good terms with his neighbors—because they’re having trouble with food supplies. But the problem, of course, isn’t with food supplies, writes planbmedia.io.

And over in France…

“We’re not happy about this; I don’t applaud what’s happening in France, unlike our journalists. Because it’s unacceptable. It’s the same thing we had (in 2020—as clarified by Lukashenko’s press service)—politicians are using children for political purposes. What’s good about that?”

It’s unclear where Lukashenko saw the similarity. The French elections are still half a year away. In any case, Macron isn’t running in them, because clinging to power with blue fingers isn’t the done thing over there.

“Of course, Macron cracks down hard on these things,” Lukashenko continued. “The only thing they can be criticized for is this: ‘Come on, it was good for them when we did it, but now it’s bad for them when they do it.’ You see—double standards.”

Just a moment—protesters in France have completely ransacked or set fire to at least 24 schools. In Belarus, the only known instance of serious property damage was an “attempt to set fire to the home of MP Haidukevich.” The French Ministry of Justice reported nearly 7,000 arrests during high school students’ protests since mid-September, according to France 24. 86% of them are minors. Twenty-one people were jailed. No sentences have taken effect yet.

In Belarus, in the case of the attempted arson alone, the defendants received sentences of up to 25 years in a penal colony. Not to mention the thousands imprisoned for “likes,” comments, and participation in peaceful protests. And then there were journalists, union members, NGO staff, authors of calls to stop the violence, students, sociologists…

But Lukashenko’s main message is this: children are sacred (unlike their parents). He emphasized that it is unacceptable to use children in this way for political purposes. “So what, he’s 12–15 years old. What are you unhappy about? You haven’t even started living yet. It’s clear that politicians are using this for their own purposes. There are elections in France in March. I think things will calm down a bit. But there’s no need to get too excited about that. The only thing, of course, is that we need to point the finger at them: ‘Guys, why were you so happy when our children were being used like this?’” he added. Lukashenko did not specify exactly who was happy or who was doing the using.

Our neighbor is in trouble, but we have pellets

At the same time, he was exceptionally peace-loving and spoke in favor of striving to build business ties and cooperation with our Western neighbors even in the current difficult situation.

“We need to cooperate with our neighbors—with the Poles, the Lithuanians, and the Latvians,” he emphasized. “In this situation, when Europe is facing food shortages due to the drought, we need to gradually work with them. Neighbors are neighbors. When we don’t just point our guns at each other but start cooperating economically, it suggests that we might just manage to avoid war.”

He did not provide any further details about the drought or the shortage. A 5 percent decline in Poland’s grain harvest compared to the 2025 harvest is unlikely to cause a shortage. In Belarus itself, it appears that the grain harvest—excluding rapeseed—is lower than last year’s.

But, of course, Lukashenko wasn’t talking about grain. He mentioned existing trade opportunities, citing the example of wood fuel pellets, which are currently in short supply in a number of neighboring countries. “I’m surprised by the Poles in general. Firewood in Poland—and in Lithuania, too—has gotten more expensive for all our neighbors. Just take firewood, pellets, and other things at a reasonable price. They’re holding out. Well, if they don’t want to buy it—so be it,” he said, spreading his arms.

“We won’t be able to sell it to them tomorrow. Because we’ve started switching to this firewood and pellets on a massive scale ourselves. It’s good technology. Gomel makes a good boiler—you pour pellets into the hopper and they’re fed in automatically. We’ll get the hang of it. We’ll need this firewood and these pellets ourselves,” he assured.

So come on over, hurry up. Otherwise, there’ll be so many pellets that we won’t have enough for ourselves. By the way, Lukashenko came up with the idea of making Belarus a great pellet power in the late 2010s, when it became clear that something had gone wrong with the wood processing industry. The plan was to sell pellets to Europe and get rich. As part of this project, 67 pellet production facilities were built in Belarus with an installed capacity of nearly 900,000 metric tons of pellets per year…

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