A colleague of mine was just in Belarus for 3 days - travelling back from Euro2012 in Kiev.
He was blown away by Minsk - he thought it was really elegant, incredibly clean and according to him, "great food". (From his descriptions it was clear that he liked Eastern European style food...)
I definitely agree that it is an elegant looking city, rebuilt with a lot of style after WW2. The suburbs are not chic or luxurious, but they are not grim either - lots of nature and nicely planned.

I heard him tell someone that Minsk was "like Paris" (.. hm.....Paris is much more crowded but has more shopping opportunities!) Although the wide boulevards, and elegant buildings - definitely reminds of Paris!

Plus summer is in full swing and he had a fantastic time - a local guy he met on the train showed him and his football fan friends around.......and told them all about what a terrible dictator Lukashenko allegedly is...

But my friend could not help noticing that things were in a pretty good shape around town in Minsk, no beggars, homeless or unemployed people loitering etc.

According to my friend, there are lots of new casinos in BY, because gambling got banned in Russia and now Belarus wants to clinch the Russian casino market. Hm...

My friend/colleague, who is a dyed-in-the-wool socialist really wanted to see "Soviet stuff" and WW2 memorials, but the guy who showed them around only showed them modern/cool places, like a micro brewery, food courts, shopping and a nightclub. So he's saying he wouldn't mind going back some time later to see those things they did not get around to.

For some reason I did not quite get, my friend did not like Kiev as much. The two cities are quite different in many ways, and perhaps his view was tainted by the fact that he had just watched Sweden booted from Euro2012.

Anyway, Minsk is a very interesting and nice place to visit!