In Minsk, a new complex for the Centre for the Isolation of Offenders (CIP), currently located on 1st Akrestsina Lane, is being built on the site of a former military town in Stepianka. Nasha Niva drew attention to the project passport posted on the construction fence at 74 Karvat Street.
According to the document, reconstruction of the building to house the CIP has been under way since September 2025. The project was developed by the Belgosproekt institute, with the Minsk City Executive Committee’s Capital Construction Department acting as the client and Construction Directorate No. 94 of Stroitrust No. 1 as the contractor. Funding is provided from the Minsk city budget, and completion is scheduled for January 2027.
The site previously housed barracks of a separate Air Force training communications battalion, built in the late 1960s. After the military unit was disbanded in 1997, the building remained unused for a long time. Preparatory work for the new complex began in the summer of 2023, the project was completed in June 2024, and amendments following state expert review were introduced in May 2025.
The project предусматривает the creation of a complex of buildings. The old barracks will be dismantled almost down to the foundation, on which a two-storey administrative building will be erected. The basement level will house sports facilities for staff, while the second floor will contain offices, rest rooms, accounting offices and an archive.
Adjoining the administrative building will be a three-storey detention facility with an underground level for technical rooms and archives. Inside, there will be areas for receiving detainees, rooms for processing documentation, showers and cells of varying capacity, as well as punishment cells. Enclosed exercise yards will be arranged on the site.
The complex will be surrounded by a three-metre fence topped with barbed wire. A checkpoint, a vehicle hangar, a fire pumping station, a transformer substation and a backup diesel generator are also planned.
The authors note that elements of a barrier-free environment were removed from the project, including tactile paving and pictograms with Braille lettering.
At the same time, a “routine repair” is scheduled in the building of the existing CIP on 1st Akrestsina Lane from March 2 to June 30, 2026. However, according to the cost estimates, the work includes dismantling 387 square metres of wooden flooring in cells and pouring a polymer coating, as well as replacing 100 square metres of window openings and bars.
No official information has been reported about a possible closure of the facility.
