Lukashenko Makes A Confession
- 31.10.2026, 16:56
The dictator once again confirmed that he had refused to impose a lockdown in Belarus.
At the opening of the new City Clinical Infectious Diseases Hospital in Minsk, Lukashenko once again brought up COVID-19. He even drew certain conclusions from the 2020 pandemic. Of course, without acknowledging responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands of Belarusians, writes planbmedia.io.
“You remember the so-called pandemic that we went through together. Despite being the only country in the world that went its own way and benefited from it. We survived by not following others who imposed total lockdowns and were throwing money around like confetti. We couldn’t afford to do either of those things,” he said.
“But we learned our lesson as we scrambled from place to place, looking for facilities to treat infectious disease patients. Fortunately, we hadn’t dismantled the infectious disease wards and hospitals in district centers and regions. But we saw that in megacities like Minsk, we lacked precisely such a compact facility where we could accommodate these patients.”
The current hospital is the result of learning from those mistakes.
“We have learned lessons from the recent pandemic. We didn’t dismiss anything or shirk our responsibilities. We recognized our own shortcomings. And we must always be prepared to prevent a recurrence of the mistakes and shortcomings we once had,” Lukashenko continued.
And, of course, he demanded that the hospital be utilized effectively. It has several units isolated from one another where, if necessary, not only infectious disease patients but also any other patients can be treated, according to the chief pandemic expert.
“These buildings must not stand empty. They must operate efficiently and deliver results,” Lukashenko stated. “In this regard, we discussed the problem—we’ve gone too far. We started building ‘palaces’ instead of hospitals long ago.” You know, a hospital is not a resort. Conditions in operating rooms, intensive care units, wards, and departments must be ideal. They must exceed global standards. And we will spare no expense to achieve that. But everything else—I emphasize this once again—is not a resort.”
The Price of the “Special Path”
As a reminder, Belarus insists that its “special path”—rejecting “COVID madness”—allowed it to preserve its economy and weather the pandemic almost as well as the most successful countries in Europe.
These claims was made possible thanks to a group of Belarusian medical professionals in collaboration with the BYMEDSOL Medical Solidarity Foundation and the “White Coats” project. Official Belarusian statistics reported 7,118 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. But these are only the cases where COVID-19 was officially diagnosed and subsequently listed as the cause of death.
The study paints a completely different, more realistic picture. It is based on excess mortality, which takes into account both those who died without being tested for COVID-19 and those who died due to pandemic-related strain on the healthcare system.
The authors compared monthly mortality rates during the pandemic years with the average figures for 2015–2019. Across the four main waves of the pandemic, they found approximately 97,026 excess deaths.
This figure is more than ten times higher than the official COVID-19 statistics. However, this does not mean that each of these 97,000 people died directly from the coronavirus. Some of the deaths may have been linked to the healthcare system being overwhelmed, the inability to receive routine treatment, delayed hospitalization, and other consequences of the pandemic. But the figure illustrates the overall demographic toll of what was happening.
In March 2020, Lukashenko spoke about vodka, saunas, and a tractor that would “cure everyone.” At a meeting on October 19, 2021, in the midst of the deadly Delta wave, he criticized the mandatory mask policy introduced by the Ministry of Health. He even referred to medical masks as “muzzles.” (Interestingly, over the past couple of years, most references to official propaganda sources containing quotes from this meeting have been carefully purged, the study’s authors note.) At the same time, the Swedish government was speaking about the extreme danger of the disease and actively urging its citizens to act responsibly, maintain a safe distance, and wear masks.