“The difference is simply enormous.” On state TV, all members of the BRSM were counted as volunteers when comparing the number of volunteers in Belarus and the EU

On August 20, 2026, Michael Albrecht, a German vlogger who had moved to Belarus, appeared on the TRK Gomel program Michael Edet. Albrecht compared Belarusian youth to their European counterparts and explained how “selfless help is becoming a unifying trend.” According to Albrecht, Belarus has nearly 900 times as many volunteers as the European Union.

“If you compare the number of volunteers per 100,000 residents in Belarus with the figure for the European Union, the difference is simply enormous. Judge for yourselves. There are 5,100 young BRSM members for every 100,000 Belarusians. In the European Union, however, there are only seven volunteers for every 100,000 people. This means we have almost 900 times as many young people ready and willing to help others as in European Union countries. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how just seven people could actually help 100,000 residents.”

To calculate the Belarusian figure, Albrecht effectively equated BRSM membership with volunteering. The organization has approximately 430,000 young members, yet the BRSM has only 40,000 volunteers, accounting for less than 10% of its total membership. According to the number of volunteers reported by the BRSM itself, there are approximately 440 volunteers per 100,000 Belarusian residents, not 5,100.

The second part of the comparison, which concerns seven volunteers per 100,000 EU residents, is also unsubstantiated. Albrecht did not cite the source of this figure. With the EU’s population at around 450 million, that figure would imply that there are just over 30,000 volunteers across the entire bloc — fewer than the number of volunteers in the BRSM alone. To back up his claim, the vlogger showed a 2012 study. However, it contains no data supporting the figure of seven volunteers per 100,000 EU residents.

A more recent European study from 2024 shows that 17% of surveyed European youth had participated in the work of volunteer organizations over the previous 12 months. Rough estimates suggest that this amounts to approximately 13 million young people across the EU. Using the same method Albrecht used, we find about 3,000 young volunteers per 100,000 residents, not seven.