Living in Belarus

In Belarus the money side is quietly favorable, with a mid-range salary, modest living costs, and a tax take so small that most of what you earn stays yours, which leaves a real cushion at month's end. The harder wall is language. Outside of tech, work happens in the local tongue, and getting by on English alone is close to impossible. IT is the one corridor where that loosens and an outsider can find a foothold.

Belarus is seeing its foreign-born population shrink. The roughly 1.1M residents born abroad represent a 3% decline over the past decade — unusual at a time when most countries' immigrant numbers are climbing. The foreign-born are overwhelmingly from the former Soviet Union, led by 664.6K from Russia and 219,800 from Ukraine. Even so, the country still takes in slightly more than the 790,000 Belarusians who live abroad.