He is a professor at the Independent University of Moscow and а researcher at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Belavin participated in the discovery of the BPST instanton (1975) which aided the understanding of the chiral anomaly and gave new directions within quantum field theory.
With G. Avdeeva he showed evidence of new coupling regimes for gauge field theory (1973).
He also developed the Belavin S-matrices, exactly solvable models in two-dimensional relativistic theories (1981).
With Vadim Knizhnik he obtained the Belavin–Knizhnik theorem on dual amplitudes in string theory (1986).