This past spring, Alexander Lukashenko faced an unexpected crisis: Belarus ran out of potatoes. The shortage hit more than just dinner tables. Belarusians eat more potatoes per capita than any other nation and so the dearth carried symbolic weight, like Greece running out of olives or Italy of pasta.

As posts about bulba vanishing from shop shelves flooded social media, Belarus’s leader blamed producers for chasing export profits instead of selling domestically. He ordered farmers to grow “enough potatoes for both us [Belarus] and Russia”, advised Belarusians to eat them only twice a week at most and to cultivate their own crops, as he, a former Soviet farm director, claimed to do himself. “Why are you whining??.?.?.?Just plant two furrows and harvest two sacks,” Lukashenko said in televised remarks. 

But as prices of the country’s “second bread” rose 10 per cent between January and March, public discontent could only be partially stifled. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared taken aback when, during a meeting with business leaders in late May, an aide mentioned that Belarus had “run out of potatoes”. “Run out?” Putin asked with a puzzled smile. “What is this?”