Context: The UN plans to cut funding for Ukrainian refugees by 25% in 2026. Starting in March, Poland cut benefits and allowances for these refugees, although temporary protection status and free access to the labor market will remain in place for another year. Meanwhile, Germany announced stricter requirements for benefit recipients who refuse employment.
On March 3, 2026, participants in the Ekspertnyi Klub political show on Belarusian Radio’s First National Channel claimed that more Ukrainians are choosing to live in Belarus. According to Mikita Bialenchanka, director of the Center for International Studies at the BSU Faculty of International Relations, refugees concluded — after “running around” EU countries — that it would be easier to “earn a reasonable living” in Belarus. He added that it is “better to live in a place where things are generally calm.”
Host Uladzimir Kazakou cited the following figures: “In 2026, 12,440 Ukrainian citizens entered Belarus. What’s my point? According to reports from the National Bank of Ukraine and European migration services, approximately 40,000 people left Ukraine in January and February. Most of them went to Germany, but 12,000 to 12,500 came to Belarus. How so? Why doesn’t the tasty, paradise-like life in Europe keep Ukrainians there? Why don’t they settle there?”
The National Bank of Ukraine has not published the final data. It is a forecast for the current year that estimates 200,000 people may leave the country. On average, that would be 17,000 people per month, or 34,000 people per two months.
According to the United Nations, 1,015,000 people left Ukraine through the western border in January 2026, while 27,000 more entered. A sample survey found that 7% of Ukrainians said they were leaving for good, suggesting about 70,000 people did so in January. This does not align with the information discussed on Ekspertnyi Klub. In the same month, only 6,244 Ukrainians entered Belarus. This represents less than 10% of those who left Ukraine permanently.
The key question is why all Ukrainians who enter Belarus are automatically presented as settlers on Belarusian radio. The Border Committee does not publish data on how many people then returned or transited, e.g., to Russia, to reach the occupied territories and visit relatives.
Another claim was also made on air that contradicts the facts:
“For them [the Ukrainian side — ed. note], it is most favorable for Ukrainian citizens to leave for the European Union. <...> In fact, they won’t publish data showing that most of these citizens left the EU for Belarus,” said Bialenchanka.
About 400,000 Ukrainian citizens entered Belarus during the four years of full-scale war. Just because they entered the country doesn’t mean they stayed to live there. For comparison, more than one million Ukrainians enter the European Union each month, though only 4.2 million are officially registered as living there. There is no official data on the number of Ukrainians who are permanently residing in Belarus. Unofficially, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates the figure at around 200,000.
“They also don’t talk about the fact that the Russian Federation has taken in the largest number of refugees — about 8.5 million Ukrainians,” said Solomon Bernstein, a Latvian blogger who moved to Belarus, another guest on the program.
Russia itself does not even voice such figures. In mid-September 2025, Yury Kokov, the Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, spoke of one million migrants from Ukraine. This figure is four times lower than the number reported in the EU and much lower than what experts from Belarusian Radio’s First National Channel mentioned.
