Brest voblast is one of the administrative regions in the Republic of Belarus located in the south-west of Poland and Ukraine. Brest, which is located on the Western Bug River, is the capital of this administrative region (voblast). Brest is the Western gate to Belarus linking an isolated, post Sovietdictatorship — known as the "last dictatorship in Europe" — to the European Union.
Brest (Belarusian: Брэст, see Cities' alternative names for other names), formerly Brest-on-the-Bug and Brest-Litovsk, is a city (population 290,000 in 2004) in Belarus close to the Polish border where the Western Bug and Mukhavets Rivers meet.
In March 1918, in the Brest-Litovsk fortress on the western outskirts of Brest at the confluence of the Western Bug and Mukhavets Rivers, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, ending the war between Russia and the Central Powers and transferring the city and its surrounding region to the sphere of influence of the German Empire.
According to the agreements of the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Brest's status as part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was officially recognised.