Like I said, I spent quite a while there, and reported a bit about it here at MR. (before the trolling started properly, and you could still have a interesting exchanges on this site)

The bigger cities in Belarus are renovated, clean, free of graffiti and very few ads.
Belarus is in a better state of repair/renovation than Ukraine.

It's true that their salaries are lower, but everything you need there, for everyday life, is subsidised. They are not paying market prices for a lot of things. The rents are extremely low, public transport is next to free, their jobs pay for room and board during their holidays etc, Healthcare, university etc free. So for everyday expenses they need less money. And everybody has a job, essentially.

I don't think the salaries there are lower than in places like Romania or Latvia. I'm pretty sure they are better off than Romanians and a lot of people in Ukraine. However, I think retired people on state pensions can just about make it through the month. That's not unique for Belarus though, and I understand that the older generation supports Lukashenko almost universally, regardless.

The problem kicks in if they want a new car, a lot of petrol, expensive electronic gadgets, designer clothes or a foreign holiday. Imported "luxury" stuff. I think there's also a housing shortage, not massive, but affecting young people.

I asked lots of people there what they thought about the current gov't because I was genuinely interested. About 70% were ok with it. Although they had some criticism they felt "better-the-devil-you-know" about Lukashenko. About 30% really hated Lukashenko, out of the people I spoke with. Those were younger people, in Minsk, essentially. One woman I spoke quite a lot with, in Minsk, said that she thought that Lukashenko was mentally ill, lol. However, she was upper middle class or whatever, in Belarus, and from what I could tell, her lifestyle was similar to my own, apart from she was annoyed that she couldn't afford chic holidays abroad. I respect everyone's view who lives ther and what goes on in Belarus is not my business who runs Belarus. But it p-sses me off that there are so many blatant lies about this country in European media.