I spent a couple of nights in Minsk a few years back on a tour of the Hero Cities... but it was closed. The highlight was a visit to one of the worst planetariums you could ever wish to see. A one hour commentary in Russian was only interuppted by the snoring of one English visitor. The Chief of police told me there had only been two car thefts in Minsk in the previous year... believe me, it was not hard to know why? So, when the Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko says that the west would find it difficult to impose sanctions on his country, he's not kidding. These people know what hardship is like.