After the Belarusian village, the Schneiders are no longer bothered by the LGBT issue. The German family, who became propaganda heroes, returns to the EU
Four years ago, Anna and Patrick Schneider went to Belarus to escape "LGBT propaganda" and lockdowns. So why are they now returning to Germany?
In 2024, the "Belarus-1" TV channel aired a story about Anna and Patrick Schneider – a family who moved to Belarus from the EU. Anna is Ukrainian, who moved to Germany when she was 15. During her student years, she met her future husband Patrick Schneider, and their daughter Marlena was born.
And then, according to that story, good events for the Schneiders in Germany ended. Anna told propagandists about the horrors of life in the West:
«In Germany and Europe, a very large LGBT propaganda began. For example, in kindergartens there were brochures about being able to be whoever you want.
You walk down the street, and there's a huge poster with two undressed guys. They are in pants, nothing on top, and one has his hand in the other's pants».
It was impossible to endure this, and the Schneiders moved to Austria. There they settled in a beautiful tourist town in the mountains, but three months after their arrival, the COVID pandemic began.
The next two years turned out not to be very interesting – due to lockdowns, Anna says, the family lived in a "work-eat, work-eat" rhythm. In a conversation with propagandists, the woman complained that when she needed to buy boots for her child in winter, they were not allowed into the store because Anna and her relatives had neither a COVID vaccine nor fresh tests. Judging by Anna's social media, she doesn't trust vaccines much.
«We realized that this was foolish, and we would not want our children to grow up in such a society,» the woman shares her impressions.
Then Anna and Patrick started looking for a new country, and they were captivated by the fact that there were no lockdowns in Belarus. They found a blogger who had moved to live in a Belarusian village, and over time decided to move themselves. Somewhere during their travels, their second daughter, Amelia, was born.
They chose Slutsk district for living, bought a house in the village of Ogorodniki. They moved shortly after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine – in her stories, Anna called it a "conflict" in quotation marks.
They renovated the house: according to the sales announcement Anna recently published, they installed a fireplace, built a new bathroom, toilet, and veranda. Anna adheres to veganism, and in the Belarusian village, she started making vegan desserts to order.
It seems like complete idyll. But on August 18, Anna published a video on Instagram where she said – the family is leaving Belarus. What happened?
The main reason is money, Anna says:
«Before, I thought that living with insufficient funds wouldn't be so hard. Like, if the house is equipped with everything, if there's your own garden, that's generally enough, you can earn a little somewhere and live.
But now I realize that I don't want to just exist. I also want to allow my children to travel, to allow my children to buy what they want and imagine, and not stand there counting every penny».
Anna talks about her earnings in Belarus. The most, the Ukrainian woman says, she earned in March, when she traded for three days. Then she managed to earn 1000 rubles a month.
By profession, Anna is a nurse, but finding a job in Belarus proved difficult:
«When I first worked part-time, I earned 350 rubles. Now, four years later, I could earn about 750 rubles in the same place. But I can't work more than part-time because of the children and the need to cook.
For Patrick, working somewhere on a construction site as a helper with his poor Russian and getting around 1500 rubles – that's nothing. In Minsk, we would probably earn twice as much».
Anna calculated that even if she and her husband maximized their work, they would earn no more than 2500 rubles for two. And for this money, the woman says, a family of four cannot live normally; it's just existence.
«I don't want to limit myself in groceries; I want to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. We are vegans; vegan food is not widespread here, and we have to make everything ourselves, there will be absolutely no time for ourselves.
Food in stores costs the same in Minsk and Slutsk, so perhaps we should have gone to Minsk from the very beginning. But we wanted to be away from big noisy cities, we wanted fresh air, we wanted a village and our own garden.
It turned out that we might have made the wrong choice,» Anna admits.
In the tags, the woman left the phrase "moving back to Germany." It seems that after the Belarusian village, the LGBT issue no longer bothers the Schneider family.
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