You are being a muppet on purpose, aren't you?
They have Visa Electron, not the standard Visa! Electron is just not accepted everywhere that's all. And believe it or not, it's not a human right or a requirement for a fulfilled life, to have a Visa card. It's simply useful if you are going to book a hotel in Western Europe, that's all.

And regardless what you think of Lukashenko & co, thanks to him the Belarussians escaped the degrading chaos and national humilition that Russia went through in the 1990s. It's just the last few years it's become fashionable to complain about dictatorship there. Previously nobody cared. Whether Lukashenko is good or bad for the country now, is hard to say. I certainly can't say, and neither can you! The only people whose opinion I really respect on this are the Belarussians, and between the ones I have asked, the split is about 50-50 what they think, with educated people in Minsk being the most suspicious against him.

But this is not a poor dump.
My pictures from rural villages are coming soon and it's not as bad as you imagined. Right now I am writing from a very chic coffeeshop where Belarussians are sitting with laptops and other gadgets, eating very tasty food and drinking Italian coffee.