Belarus, the authoritarian state headed by President Alexander Lukashenko, is set to secure a $2.5bn (£1.7bn, €1.8bn) International Monetary Fund emergency loan to help it weather the global economic crisis.

The country would be the fifth former communist state to obtain IMF support in recent months, following Georgia, Hungary, Ukraine and Latvia. Unlike those countries, which were hit by the international credit crunch largely because of their reliance on foreign loans, Belarus has been driven into the IMF’s arms because of a sharp decline in Russian economic aid and exports to Russia.