Why Belarusians Don't Like Russian Tourists

• 26.08.2026, 10:28

It's not just about litter, rudeness, and behavior on the roads.

Not a week goes by without social media buzzing about yet another post or video depicting the behavior of Russian tourists in Belarus. Belarusians, who as a nation are not entirely free of a certain inferiority complex and self-criticism, feel—when looking at Russians in this context—that they possess a higher standard of everyday civility.

Russians litter, park illegally, violate traffic laws, show no respect for Belarusian norms and traditions, demand to be paid in Russian rubles, and even make fun of our language. In short, they generally behave much as shown in numerous social media videos—for example, jumping on the hood of a car.

So why should they behave any differently? They feel right at home in Belarus. So they act “just like at home.”

On the other hand, many Russians sincerely praise Belarus and admire it. Some admire the European character of Belarusian architecture, the cleanliness of the streets, and the politeness of the Belarusians themselves. For the fact that in Belarus you can (for now) freely use the internet, Western social media, “Facebook,” “Instagram,” and that there are clothing stores like “Zara,” “Bershka,” and “Mango”. For these people, Belarus is a sort of “Europe on a budget,” which is now largely off-limits to them. It’s a bit of the West and a bit of Russia at the same time, because everything around them is in Russian, and the realities are generally understandable.

Belarus attracts other Russians because, in their view, it’s a piece of the Soviet Union—a sort of “Crimea,” so to speak, or the part of Russia they lost. Russians make up about 60 percent of the guests at Belarusian health resorts, and the authorities recently standardized the prices for vacation packages—now they’re the same for Belarusians and foreigners. And then there’s the cleanliness, the order, nothing but Slavic faces on the streets—and so few people in general!

Do you know why there are so few people on the streets of Minsk? Maybe because in recent years, hundreds of thousands have emigrated, forced to flee political repression?

After all, when a Russian criticizes Minsk and calls it boring and archaic, some Belarusians write in the comments: “That’s just fine; there should be more articles like this so that Russians don’t flock here in such large numbers.” But most Belarusians on social media take offense at any critical remark. And that strikes me as odd, too: it seems to me that this smacks of a certain provincialism. Why does it bother you if some unknown Russian says something critical about Belarus or Minsk?

However, what really upsets Belarusians is precisely the arrogance of the “Russian tourist” and his sense of superiority. Here’s how a female taxi driver from Minsk, whose video has garnered millions of views, put it: while there are reasonable people among Russians, sometimes a tourist arrives with the airs of a lord who starts lecturing locals on how to live “properly.”

This is where Belarusians truly differ radically in mindset from Russians. We don’t have that arrogance, that desire to meddle in other people’s affairs. When Belarusians visit another country, they unconditionally respect local norms and rules of conduct; they don’t impose their own ways on others.

And when Belarusians encounter Russian rudeness and arrogance, they immediately understand how we differ. And our staunch supporters of “ssoboyki and shuflyadki” start passionately lecturing Russians about order, clean streets, the habit of stopping at red lights, and courtesy on the roads. “We have culture, not your chaos; we respect personal boundaries; we’re calmer; we don’t have your noise, rudeness, and arrogance; we don’t impose our ways on others”—and so on—a long and sometimes controversial list of positive traits of the national character.

But there is a radical solution to this problem. If only all—or at least a significant majority—of Belarusians spoke Belarusian in everyday life, it would never occur to a single Russian to ask, “How are you different from us?””


But as long as we, as a nation, live within Russian culture, in the Russian information space, surrounded by Russian films and pop culture, and speak Russian—naturally, Russians themselves will not consider us a separate nation. As long as a significant portion of Belarusians perceives the Russian cultural and media landscape as their own—consequently, Russians will continue to perceive Belarus as “their own.”

The situation was roughly the same in Eastern Ukraine, not only before the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but even up until 2022, the start of the full-scale war—my Ukrainian colleague Vitaly Portnikov, for example, has written quite extensively about this. He spoke of a pro-Russian identity and an identity of indifference—the fact that many people didn’t care what language they spoke. It was only Russian bombs that forced many Ukrainians to rethink their attitude toward Russia and to become, mentally and culturally, Ukrainians first and foremost.

In any case, Belarusians’ attitude toward the “Russian tourist” shows that, on an everyday and psychological level, Belarusians distinguish themselves from Russians, understanding that they are people of a different culture—even a different civilization. However, the process of the Soviet-Russian identity fading away in Belarus is not yet complete. I really don’t want this to happen in a tragic way—through war. Are you ready to switch to the Belarusian language?

Vitaly Tsygankov, Belsat