Apparently Belarus has never before been a separate country, not before 1992 I mean.

There are lots of nationalistic slogans around here in Belarus, there is clearly an effort to create a national identity. I don't get the feeling that there is any serious commitment to speaking Belarussian though. It's extremely confusing that Belarussian names are used on street signs and metro but no actual person uses them, and not maps either. One woman I spoke with told me that she couldn't speak Belarussian at all but she just thought it sounded nice and support it for that reason.

There are a lot of benefits to being in the same country if you speak the same language anyway. Personally I think Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland should make one big country together - we'd be much more influential. The culture is the same and the langauges (apart from Finnish) are mutually intelligible, could be just slightly modified to a common language very easily.

Are there any export sanctions between the EU and Belarus? I mean there must be a lot of products that Belarus makes that would be of interest to the EU to purchase? Tractors for goodness sake, clothing (there is definitely a clothing industry in Belarus)....