‘I’m no longer a foreigner, I’m a citizen of Belarus!’ How famous blogger Maxometer, who moved from Latvia, is settling in

We met with Maxometer at his home. The country house is gradually being made cozy, but there’s still plenty of work ahead. On the property, there’s a sauna, the owner’s pride, as well as a large plot of land for a vegetable garden. Soon, there may be some poultry - the chicken coop is almost ready. As for pets, there’s a cat. There might be a dog too. BelTA correspondents took a look at how this well-known blogger - just plain Maxim in everyday life - lives now.

“I’m not a rich man. I sold my apartment in Riga, came here, and bought this little house. I’m living quietly, bit by bit,” Maxim said. “I never had my own land. But I always wanted to have my own house and land, my own garden, my own sauna. In Latvia, I never had any of that. But here I do. The house keeps me busy. I have to work a lot, turning screws, digging, drilling. It’s a different life here.”

Recently, another wonderful thing happened in Maxometer’s life. In mid-April, he has been a citizen of Belarus.

“My father and grandfather are Belarusian, but I ended up being a citizen of Latvia and lived there my whole life. I hadn’t planned to leave until those fascists came to power. Many people, like me, are moving to Belarus,” Maxim explained, sharing his decision to relocate.

Recently, he posted a video address online expressing his gratitude to the Belarusian president and the Belarusian people for welcoming him.

“I recorded that address to Aleksandr Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] spontaneously. I had no agenda. I wasn’t planning anything. I was just walking around Vitebsk and got a boost of good, positive energy. I’m no longer a foreigner, I’m a citizen of Belarus! And I’m getting to know my new homeland,” Maxim shared.

The video garnered 100,000 views. And the comments were warm and good-natured. People thanked him for his kind words about the president and shared their own personal stories. In short, the video evoked nothing but positive emotions.

That said, Maxometer himself admitted that the path to obtaining a passport was not smooth. “To get a passport and settle in, you have to put in some effort. But it’s worth going through,” he said.

Maxim speaks openly and willingly about the reasons he left Latvia. “The main reason is that the atmosphere in Latvia is very unhealthy. People, especially Latvians, see us as second-class citizens. You can live your whole life in Latvia, but you’ll still be an outsider to them. I, for example, know Latvian. I worked in railway security. I was a well-prepared person. But no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you study Latvian, you’ll always be an outsider to them,” he said.

According to Maxim, by banning the Russian language, Latvia is pushing people out. “If not for the events of recent years, if not for the Russophobia, I might not have left Latvia. Why change where you live?” Maxim explained. But state-level Russophobia forced him to do so.

“Kids go to school and feel terrible. Imagine, if they start speaking to each other in Russian, they’re forced to write ‘I love Latvian’ on a piece of paper and are forbidden from speaking Russian. Children don’t want to go to school or kindergarten. They suffer psychological trauma because they feel like second-class citizens. They aren’t killing us yet, but they’re slowly pushing us out. It’s an unhealthy atmosphere. It was never like this before,” Maxim said.

After moving to Belarus, he breathed a sigh of relief. His neighbors reacted in different ways: some were surprised and even a bit uneasy (why on earth would a Riga resident move to their small town?), while others took it completely in stride. “At first, their eyes were wide. They just couldn’t understand what I was doing here. I told them: ‘I’m living here!’ But now, after two years, people have basically gotten used to it,” he said.

These days, Maxim’s daily concerns are simple and endless: construction, repairs, cleaning, cooking. He lives alone. His ex-wife stayed in Riga, and his child is grown. He has adapted to Belarus and made friends.

“The winter was severe. I don’t have electric heating, so I had to carry firewood and stoke the stove,” Maxim continued. “But when friends come over, the stove is blazing, six people are sitting around the table, and music is playing, it’s a lot of fun. And it gives you a sense of freedom, you know... You can talk about anything. That never happened in Latvia.”

The blogger said that he once traveled all over Europe. He lived in France and the Netherlands, and visited Germany and Switzerland. “I had a huge choice of where to go. With that passport, I could live anywhere in the European Union. I traveled around and looked. I didn’t like any of it. Yes, salaries are higher there. But you’ll always be an immigrant there, an outsider. You have to learn the language, and the culture is different,” he said.

According to Maxim, the first factor in choosing Belarus as his home was the orderliness on the immigration front. Foreigners here are monitored and supervised. That’s more than you can say for many other countries. “Belarusians feel very comfortable in their own country. Unlike some states where the native population no longer feels that way. That was the deciding factor. Plus, I don’t have to prove anything because my father and grandfather are Belarusian. And I still have relatives living here,” he added.

“Besides that, I love how clean and orderly Belarus is. No one ever throws a cigarette butt on the street. If someone eats a hamburger, they’ll walk to a trash can and throw away their garbage. You don’t see that in other countries,” he said.

Maxometer speaks of Belarus and Belarusians with immense gratitude. And he believes that through his work, he is benefiting his new homeland.

“I hope that what I’m doing on TikTok is bearing fruit. I can brag a little - there are people who have moved to Belarus because of what I do. They write to me that before watching my videos, they had never thought about Belarus. But then, with the visa-free entry, they came, took a look, and thought: why not make the move?” he said.

Maxim knows that among those who have relocated are people from maritime professions. For instance, one man from Riga decided he didn’t want to live in Latvia and feel like a second-class citizen. He bought a little house in Belarus. He still goes to sea for work, but he leaves all his money in Belarus.

According to Maxometer, there are many people in Latvia who want to move to Belarus. He gets asked the same questions over and over: what documents are needed, how to transfer children to schools, what happens to pensions. In other words, the interest is huge, the blogger said.