A Freudian Slip
- 15.07.2026, 8:14
You can't replace a nation's elite.
Shukhratbek Abdurakhmanov, governor of the Andijan Region, “is reporting alongside his Vitebsk counterpart Alexander Rogozhnik,” reported an unofficial Telegram channel of Alexander Lukashenko’s press service on July 14. Thus, the regime-aligned press was quick to place the Uzbek official within the Belarusian leader’s power structure.
It is clear that, in reality, Abdurakhmanov does not report to Lukashenko, even though the latter has begun addressing the head of the Andijan Region informally.
But the point is that Minsk and Tashkent have agreed to cooperate closely, including in the area of labor migration.
So it’s no surprise that the Belarusian leader invited a guest from Uzbekistan to the Orsha District. One of the topics was attracting workers from there, primarily for agriculture.
“We have more or less decent housing in our villages. Let’s fix things up together. <�…> Your children will go to kindergarten and school under the same conditions as Belarusians,” Lukashenko urged.
He called on Abdurakhmanov to also pay attention to the southeastern part of the Mogilev region, where workers are also needed.
We’ll add: a labor shortage, especially in rural areas, is practically universal in Belarus.
A Freudian slip: “Before the Pakistanis…”
According to state media reports, Uzbek citizens are planned to be recruited not only for agriculture but also for construction, industry, the service sector, and as junior medical staff.
Yesterday, 250 Uzbeks arrived in the Vitebsk region, and all of them were assigned to their posts. Additionally, an agreement was reached for the arrival of another 5,000 people from the Andijan region. They will begin arriving in groups of 500 starting in September.
Thus, the process has begun that the Belarusian government recently agreed upon in Minsk with the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
During the visit of the government delegation he led, the two countries signed an agreement on the organized recruitment and employment of citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan for temporary work in Belarus.
On July 9, Lukashenko assured Mirziyoyev and his entourage: “We love Uzbeks here. Even more than Pakistanis… I want your people to come here with their families.”
The remark about Pakistanis was a Freudian slip. Last April, following talks in Minsk with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Lukashenko stunned the public with his intention to invite 100,000–150,000 migrant workers from that Asian country.
Even in Belarus, a country terrorized by repression, such news caused a sensation on social media. Citizens were unsettled by the prospect of a massive influx of people with a very different cultural background, especially from a troubled country.
Lukashenko was forced to offer a clumsy justification: “We’re not inviting just anyone,” he said, “but specialists.” At the same time, security forces began cracking down on “instigators of interethnic hatred.”
But in the end, the whole scheme fizzled out (as Ales Gudia, an economic columnist for “Pozirku,” had predicted as early as last year). Moreover, it’s safe to assume that the Pakistanis themselves weren’t particularly interested in working in Belarus.
In any case, according to data from the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs, only 561 Pakistani citizens arrived in the country to work in 2025.
At the same time, Interior Minister Ivan Kubrakov reported in May of this year that there were only 324 migrants from Pakistan in Belarus. This suggests that even among the modest number who arrived, not all of them stayed.
Meanwhile, in the first six months of 2026 alone, 13,555 labor migrants arrived from Turkmenistan and 2,547 from Uzbekistan.
The government promises not to accept just anyone
Having made a misstep with the Pakistanis, the Belarusian authorities, it seems, have decided to focus specifically on Uzbeks.
Here are a few reasons. This nation is known for its hard work. There are still some lingering memories from the Soviet Union of the “family of nations,” as well as a relative knowledge of the Russian language.
Moreover, Uzbekistan is densely populated (“You have nowhere to put all these people,” as Lukashenko put it); there are many young people there, and there isn’t enough work to go around. Belarus, on the other hand, is facing a demographic crisis.
So there is a mutual interest here. Moreover, we’re talking about organized, intergovernmental recruitment of workers to meet the needs of Belarusian enterprises.
“There must be order. There shouldn’t be any chaos. That’s why it must be selective and targeted,” Lukashenko emphasizes, no doubt hoping to reassure his compatriots—who aren’t used to an abundance of foreigners—from the outset.
You Can’t Replace the Nation’s Elite
Political opponents of the regime generally react to this issue as follows: he drove out unwanted Belarusians, and now he’s looking for workers from far-flung lands.
Of course, the brutal crackdown on the 2020 protests led to a massive exodus of people of working age from the country. But, to be honest, attributing the labor shortage solely to the nature of the regime isn’t entirely accurate.
Democracies in Europe have long faced similar problems in the labor market. In relatively developed societies, birth rates are lower. So the Old World has been relying on migrant labor for a long time.
It’s another matter that their influx has created acute problems there. But that’s a separate issue, and Belarus—where there are still few residents with a radically different cultural background—is far from that point.
It is also worth noting that after 2020, it was primarily skilled professionals and highly educated people who left the country: doctors, IT specialists, entrepreneurs, and the creative intelligentsia.
As for Uzbekistan, the plan is to attract primarily manual laborers to rural areas, construction sites, and factories. Well, and orderlies, too.
Thus, with all due respect to the newcomers, they do not compensate for the consequences of the blow to the nation’s elite.
Alexander Klaskovsky, “Pozirk”