Another Failed Project Of Lukashenko
- 20.05.2025, 13:00
The satellite cities are empty.
In May 2014, Lukashenka signed a decree on the development of satellite cities. At that time, six cities received the status of Minsk's satellite. They were supposed to absorb the rapidly growing population of Minsk. Not everything worked out, to put it mildly. This spring, the first deputy head of the Administration Natalya Petkevich went to inspect Lukashenko's next megaproject, writes planbmedia.io.
Satellites stall
Petkevich named Lukashenko as the author of the idea of satellite cities and noted that the idea is "magnificent and complex." And Smolevichi, where she visited on Monday, is a near-perfect satellite town.
"Before that, we visited Skidel and Zhabinka. Smolevichi is almost a perfect example. In fact, somewhere it becomes very frustrating that we are swinging slowly. Ten years have passed, and if we had started over, it would have been very different. But we started late. Somewhere there are objective reasons, somewhere, unfortunately, there are subjective ones. In one of the cities, an example was given of project works being carried out for almost five years. This is, of course, abnormal," admitted the official.
Lukashenko himself started to promote the idea fifteen years ago. But the matter didn't stick. "However, since 2012, the case has not moved further than one completed house in Smolevichi. It will not move if the State Program for the removal of production facilities has failed," he lamented in 2018. - "But the transfer of the planned 12 enterprises (for example, Belarusian Wallpaper, shoe factory Luch, Minsk Heating Equipment Plant and others) would attract labor force to the regions.
But the enterprises were in no hurry to change their residence, the projects were delayed or even sabotaged. Among the notable "postponements" one can note the closure of Minsk-1 airport, in place of which "Dana" is building "Minsk-World", and the poultry farm named after Krupskaya. Krupskaya poultry farm, (Triple" took for the site, but in the end the residential complex "Levada" was built here by another company - "Iron").
So far empty
So there are few jobs in satellite towns, even ideal ones. Most people have to commute to Minsk for work. But it turned out that fast and inexpensive transportation to the satellite cities is underdeveloped. At least, the queues for the shuttle bus to Smolevichi are still standing in Minsk, near the subway "Vostok".
"The railroad is nothing new: the city train is extremely rare, plus you have to change to a local bus to get to new buildings - in short, it was and will be inconvenient here," noted the other day blogger Denis Blishch.
But last fall, Lukashenko also remembered about transportation. He suggested building high-speed roads for trains to Minsk's satellite cities. According to his estimates, it would not take much time and would not require large financial investments. Lukashenko didn't specify why it couldn't be done during the ten years of the satellite cities program.
Today Petkevich admitted that even Smolevichi is growing slower than planned.
"The task was to grow to 50 thousand people, but so far there are 23 thousand. There are hints to grow up to 27 thousand, but Smolevichi did not fulfill the goal of 50 thousand," she said. 50 thousand is the plan until 2035. So far, judging by the photos of both bloggers and state journalists, the town is quite deserted.
The people continue to complain about the lack of doctors, teachers, coaches, hypermarkets and other joys of life. Petkevich, without going into details, assured that the availability of medical care and qualification in Smolevichi is very good. The rest, in general, is also good. The official looked beautiful, the journalists paid attention to her luxury Hermes belt.