The question of whether contemporary Belarusian and Russian (as well as Ukrainian and Rusyn) are dialects of a single language or separate languages is not entirely decided by linguistic factors alone because there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility.
The question of whether contemporary Belarusian and Russian (as well as Ukrainian and Rusyn) are dialects of a single language or separate languages is not entirely decided by linguistic factors alone. This is because there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility.