Outdoor advertising in Minsk

Advertising faces in the catalogue: 2,507. Addresses under them: 1,783. Owners: 10. Every face carries an exact address, plus a photo and a rate-card price where the owner has published them.

Formats in the catalogue: 11. The format carrying the most faces is “Billboards”, with 1,817 of them. The municipal operator, Minskreklama, sells its media in categories of its own:

• boards along the MKAD ring road;
• boards along the M2 highway to Minsk National Airport;
• billboards and wall-mounted structures;
• fences and road overpasses;
• banners strung across the street;
• LED screens;
• light posters in metro underpasses;
• pillars and poster columns.

Sizes and permitted locations come not from a national act but from a decision of the city executive committee — clause 3 of article 13 of the Law on Advertising gives it that power. So the dimensions of a given structure are confirmed by its own permit, not by a general list.

The permit comes from the Minsk City Executive Committee, and the Law on Advertising itself caps the review times:

• a placement application — up to 15 working days;
• up to 30 working days where a site-tie design and/or a connection to utilities is required;
• extending or reissuing a permit — up to 5 working days.

The operative procedure was approved by Council of Ministers resolution No. 395 of 7 July 2021. If the structure falls inside a road protection strip or within the red lines of a street, road or square, the permit is issued only after clearance from the State Automobile Inspectorate, and inside a protection strip the road owner has to clear it too.

Yes: the Minsk City Executive Committee clears the content separately from the permit for the structure. One clearance covers the whole city, so the same advertisement can run at any Minsk address without being cleared again.

It is administrative procedure 9.14 of Council of Ministers resolution No. 561 of 6 October 2021: the artwork goes in as an A4 colour print in two copies; the term is 5 working days, or 15 if other bodies have to be asked for documents; there is no fee and the clearance is open-ended. On a historic and cultural asset, or on its grounds, the artwork is also agreed with the Ministry of Culture. We review the artwork before it goes to print.

In Belarusian and/or Russian: clause 2 of article 10 of the Law on Advertising allows a foreign language only alongside them, and only where the text is identical in content and in technical presentation. The same clause lists the exceptions, among them:

• trademarks and service marks;
• established foreign terms in their original spelling;
• foreign-language product names;
• stage names, the names of ensembles and events, domain names.

For an international campaign this means reworking the artwork rather than adding a line of small print: a campaign written entirely in Russian is lawful, one written entirely in English is not.

Nezavisimosti Avenue, the city's main street, is protected by the state as a complex historic and cultural asset, so the artwork for an advertisement on an architectural monument is also agreed with the Ministry of Culture. On such a building the advertising may take only the form of separate letters, signs and images, a wall-mounted bracket may be no larger than 700 × 700 × 300 mm, and nothing may obstruct the reading of the massing or the architectural detail.

The same regime covers historic and cultural assets of category “0”, “1”, “2” and of no category, and their grounds. We check a central address against that register when we build the shortlist.