Belarus

Belarus · Travel guide

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) with a population of 9.1 million. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into six regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city; it is administered separately as a city with special status. For most of the medieval period, the lands of modern-day Belarus were ruled by independent city-states such as the Principality of Polotsk. By the 14th century these lands had come fully under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; this period lasted for 500 years until the 1792–1795 partitions of Poland-Lithuania placed Belarus within the Russian Empire for the first time. In…