and you are clearly not American.
He is from the USSR and a native Russian speaker, haven't you understood?
It probably looked pretty bad there about 5 years ago.
Probably it looked similar. My grandmother used to say that Minsk was very clean, that the defieciency was smaller.
I'd say that it's the result of the 100% employment drive in Belarus.
Where did you find this information? I don't think it is connected to employment.