Young professionals who studied at foreign universities have every opportunity to find work back home, Belarusian Education Minister Andrei Ivanets said during a discussion on foreign education on the program “Say, Don’t Be Silent” on Belarus 1 TV on April 17, 2025.
"We’re doing the same work for those who graduate from Russian and other foreign universities, encouraging them to come back home and put their knowledge to use here. There’s nothing wrong or shameful about getting an education abroad, but as the president says, the most important thing is to return and not lose your connection to your homeland," the minister said.
Belarus has agreements with several countries on mutual recognition of diplomas, including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and others. In 2002, Minsk signed the Lisbon Convention, which streamlines the recognition of degrees and qualifications earned in European countries. This was one of the requirements for Belarus to join the Bologna Process in 2015. This was one of the requirements for Belarus to join the Bologna Process in 2015.However, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Belarusian and Russian universities were suspended from participating.
In 2022, Belarus unilaterally canceled its agreement with Poland on recognizing higher education degrees, even though Poland competes with Russia for the highest number of Belarusian students. We covered this in our previous fact-check, which also involved Education Minister Andrei Ivanets. Since 2023, Belarus has also revoked a similar agreement with Ukraine.
On the same episode of “Say, Don’t Be Silent" program, Ivanets explained that in 2025, foreign degrees are not recognized automatically but must go through a specific process.
"We have a clear and transparent process for recognizing foreign degrees, where the curriculum from the overseas university is compared to our own programs ... In some cases, I have to say, it’s actually easier to enroll again and earn a Belarusian degree—even through distance learning—than to retrain specialists coming from Poland and Lithuania in particular."
In other words, Belarus introduced a process that could make it harder to recognize foreign degrees. This fulfilled an order from Alexander Lukashenko.
“They’ll brainwash them over there, just like the Poles do with our kids who study there, and then send them back to us as a fifth column. That’s not going to happen. I’ve ordered the government to take steps soon to stop recognizing degrees earned abroad,” he said back in 2020.
