A visit to the Grodno Azot factory begins with management proudly showing off the company’s newest accomplishment – not the acres of chimneys, pipes and buildings which turn natural gas into fertiliser, but the new power plant, designed to reduce its reliance on that same natural gas.

That is because the cheap Russian energy that has fuelled Belarus’s economy since the end of the Soviet Union is becoming steadily more expensive. The preoccupation of every factory manager is how to save energy, as the authoritarian government of Alexander Lukashenko, the president, scrambles to find the money to pay for gas while shielding industry and the population from price increases.