Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno (Hrodna), Gomel (Homiel), Mogilev (Mahilyow) and Vitebsk (Viciebsk). Forty percent of its 207600 km2 is forested, and its strongest economic sectors are agriculture and manufacturing.



Until the 20th century, the Belarusians lacked the opportunity to create a distinctive national identity because for centuries the lands of modern-day Belarus belonged to several ethnically different countries, including the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Russian Empire, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic (1918–19), Belarus became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Byelorussian SSR.



The final unification of Belarusian lands within its modern borders took place in 1939, when the ethnically Belarusian-Russian lands held by the Second Polish Republic (interwar Poland) were annexed into the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,and attached to Soviet Belarus. The territory and its nation were devastated in World War II, during which Belarus lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources; the republic was redeveloped in the post-war years.





The parliament of the republic declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence on 25 August 1991. Alexander Lukashenko has been the country's president since 1994. Under his lead and despite objections from Western governments, Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of the economy, have been implemented. Since 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State.





Most of Belarus's population of 9.85 million reside in the urban areas surrounding Minsk and other oblast (regional) capitals.More than 80% of the population are native Belarusians, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages: Belarusian and Russian. The Constitution of Belarus does not declare an official religion, although the primary religion in the country is Russian Orthodox Christianity. The second most popular, Roman Catholicism, has a much smaller following by comparison, but both Orthodox and Catholic Christmas and Easter are officially respected as national holidays.

Belarus is landlocked, relatively flat, and contains large tracts of marshy land.According to a 2005 estimate by the United Nations, 40% of

Belarus is covered by forests.Many streams and 11,000 lakes are found in Belarus.Three major rivers run through the country: the Neman, the Pripyat, and the Dnepr. The Neman flows westward towards the Baltic sea and the Pripyat flows eastward to the Dnepr; the Dnepr flows southward towards the Black Sea.Belarus's highest point is Dzyarzhynskaya Hara (Dzyarzhynsk Hill) at 345 metres (1,132 ft), and its lowest point is on the Neman River at 90 metres (295 ft). The average elevation of Belarus is 525 feet (160 m) above sea level.[100] The climate ranges from harsh winters, with average January temperatures at −6 °C (21.2 °F), to cool and moist summers with an average temperature of 18 °C (64.4 °F).[101] Belarus has an average annual rainfall of 550 to 700 mm (21.7 to 27.6 in).[101] The country experiences a yearly transition from a continental climate to a maritime climate.





Horses grazing in Minsk Province.Belarus's natural resources include peat deposits, small quantities of oil and natural gas, granite, dolomite (limestone), marl, chalk, sand, gravel, and clay.About 70% of the radiation from neighboring Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster entered Belarusian territory, and as of 2005 about a fifth of Belarusian land (principally farmland and forests in the southeastern provinces) continues to be affected by radiation fallout.The United Nations and other agencies have aimed to reduce the level of radiation in affected areas, especially through the use of caesium binders and rapeseed cultivation, which are meant to decrease soil levels of caesium-137.



Belarus is bordered by Latvia on the north, Lithuania to the northwest, Poland to the west, Russia to the north and east and Ukraine to the south. Treaties in 1995 and 1996 demarcated Belarus's borders with Latvia and Lithuania, but Belarus failed to ratify a 1997 treaty establishing the Belarus-Ukraine border.Belarus and Lithuania ratified final border demarcation documents in February 2007