The country, which has been independent since 1991 (the year of the dissolution of the USSR), is often referred to as Belarus in official documents. The name of the country has had several different variants; throughout the Soviet period it was known as the Byelorussian SSR. The official UN designation in English is The Republic of Belarus (as proposed by the Belarusian Government itself), reflecting the English adaptation of an approximate transcription of Беларусь.

The capital of Belarus is Minsk, and the population of the entire country is 9,490,000 inhabitants. The country has one of the lowest population densities on the continent, at 46 pop./km².

Belarus contains 3 levels of territorial authority:

• a primary level (pervichnyy), comprising villages and towns;
• a “basic” level (bazovyy), which includes cities situated in administrative regions of the country, as well as the districts (rayony) which form part of the administrative regions;
• a regional level; that is, the regional authorities corresponding to the administrative regions of the country (oblasts), including the capital Minsk.