There are currently around 1.2 million Russians in Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

, which accounts for 11.4% of the population of Belarus and builds up the largest national minority in the country.

Many Russian-Belarusians are descendants of people who migrated to Belarus during the Soviet times, as technical specialists and military or administrative personnel. There is also a minor group of Old Believers

Old Believers

In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers separated after 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon between 1652–66...

 who settled in Belarus in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

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In early Soviet times the Moscow-appointed Belarusian government was largely formed from non-Belarusians like the Panteleimon Ponomarenko

Panteleimon Ponomarenko

Panteleimon Kondrat'evich Ponomarenko ; 9 August 1902 18 January 1984) was a general in the Red Army before becoming a Soviet administrator in Belarus and then Kazakhstan. He was born in Krasnodar Krai, Russia....

 or Nikolay Gikalo

Nikolay Gikalo

Nikolay Fedorovich Gikalo was a Soviet revolutionary and statesman. From 1915 he served in the Russian Imperial Army, in 1917 he joined the RSDLP. He commanded the Red Army in the fight against the White Army in the Northern Caucasus...

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There is a large proportion of ethnic Russians among the current political leadership around Alexander Lukashenka.

Censuses show a constant decline of the number of people identifying themselves as Russians in Belarus due to the process of assimilation

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...

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