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BIPART Publishes New Study on Interregional Cooperation Between Belarus and Russia
BIPART has published a new study, “Beyond Moscow and Minsk: How Interregional Cooperation Between Belarus and Russia Works.” The research examines cooperation agreements, meetings between regional leaders, and developments in regional ties from 2018 to 2026. It finds that contacts between Belarusian and Russian regions intensified significantly after 2022: 30 bilateral meetings between regional leaders were recorded in 2018–2021, compared with 146 from 2022 through July 2026. The main drivers of this increase were Russia’s war against Ukraine and the subsequent tightening of Western sanctions, which heightened the importance of economic cooperation, import substitution, and the restructuring of logistics networks.
The authors note that the intensification of contacts has largely built on existing relationships, while economic interests remain the main driver of cooperation despite increasingly prominent ideological rhetoric. At the same time, interregional ties have become an additional channel reinforcing Belarus’s economic dependence on Russia. The study also examines the gradual and selective inclusion of Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia into this network of cooperation. So far, this process remains less institutionalised than cooperation with Russian regions.