Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko

Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko is the Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of Belarus Armed Forces; he heads the Security Council of the Republic of Belarus. He is Chairman of the Supreme State Council of the Union of Belarus and Russia. Lukashenko as a product of his upbringing -- a Belarusian Soviet peasant turned ideology officer. Raised in the Soviet Union, Lukashenko naturally believes that the state rules the people, but as a Belarusian he wants to develop the country apart from Moscow.

Lukashenko, like any peasant, relies first and foremost on craftiness to achieve his objectives. As a former Soviet Army political officer, the dictator understands the use of ideology as a veneer to mask the true intentions of one's actions. Lukashenko can make decisions, including harsh ones, but he knows to stop short of allowing opponents to tie him to extra-judicial executions.

Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko is the leading politician of the present-day Belarus. Mundane coverage of Lukashenko's daily activities normally dominates the first 30 minutes of the daily state television news. He had not belonged to the Communist Party or government nomenclature, nor had he held any posts in the top power hierarchy. When being deputy of the BSSR Supreme Soviet he was the only one to vote against the Belovezh Agreements on the abolishment of the USSR.

Lukashenka has skillfully managed and minimized dissent and opposition with an ever-changing kaleidoscope of sticks and carrots. He appoints and retains officials at all levels based on their personal loyalty to him. Officials have learned to maintain a low profile and eschew interviews. Even people who follow the region closely would be hard-pressed to name any Belarusian official other than Lukashenka. He has avoided creating a ruling political party, a politburo, or any other form of institutionalized authoritarianism that could emerge as a threat.

A.G. Lukashenko was born on the 30 of August, 1954, in the settlement of Kopys, Orsha district, Vitebsk region. Belarusian. He grew up and was reared without a father. Since his youth he had to put upon his shoulders a considerable part of the care for his family. He was interestedly taking part in the social life of the collectives, in which he studied or worked. He graduated from two higher educational establishments: the Mogilev State University named after A.A. Kuleshov (1975) and the Belarusian Agricultural Academy (1985). Historian, economist.

In 1975-1977 and in 1980-1982, A.G. Lukashenko served in the frontier troops and in the Soviet Army. After his service in the Army he worked in Komsomol and Communist party bodies, in the economic sphere - as deputy manager and manager of enterprises of industry, building materials, agroindustrial complex of the BSSR.

In 1990 A.G. Lukashenko becomes a people's deputy, he is elected to the Supreme Council (Parliament) of the Republic of Belarus. Speaking at parliamentary debates, he was voicing resolute criticism of extreme viewpoints of the politicians. He held the post of chairman of the Supreme Council committee on fighting corruption (as it was popularly termed).

On the 10th of July 1994, as a result of difficult election campaign involving five other contenders from the whole spectrum of the country's political forces, A.G. Lukashenko was elected the President of the Republic of Belarus. He received more than 80 percent of the electors' votes. The referenda of 1995 and 1996 determined the constitutional structure of the country, resolved the language problems, approved the state symbols, spoke up unambiguously for the union with Russia.

The oppositionists depreciatingly call him an "agriculturist." However, the President prides himself upon having devoted a lot of efforts to the agrarian production and to the people of rural areas. "All of us come from villages, he often underscores. - Those, who do not feel their motherly land heart in their hearts, those, who are nothing more but "pavement tramplers," will never gain an understanding of the life's problems. A.G. Lukashenko is proud of being called "batka" (dad) by the people, such an address having always been used with respect to authoritative people.

In September 2001 Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko was reelected President of the Republic of Belarus by the overwhelming majority of votes (75.65%). Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko scored a victory at the elections in March 2006, in which 83 percent of the electors voted in his favour, and he was reelected as the Head of the Belarusian State.

Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko was inaugurated in a brief, highly orchestrated and sparsely attended ceremony in Minsk 08 April 2006. As required by the Constitution, he recited the oath in poorly accented Belarusian, one of the very rare instances when Lukashenko has spoken the language. Lukashenko speaks Russian wherever he talks. Lukashenko speaks Russian and a Belarusian patois rather than formal Belarusian.

Lukashenka declared himself the victor of the 2010 presidential election, claiming 80% of the vote. However, the vote count was declared by the OSCE/ODIHR election monitoring mission to have been “bad and very bad in almost half of all observed polling stations.” Consequently, the United States Government does not recognize these results as legitimate.

The next presidential vote is due in 2020 and in Belarus, as in all hybrid authoritarian regimes, election season is always a potential crisis. Two years younger than Putin, Lukashenka will turn 65 in August. He appears to be in good health and to lead a healthy lifestyle -- an example he frequently urges Belarusians to follow. He has said the election will be held, and he seems certain to secure a sixth presidential term. Nonetheless, after 25 years of Lukashenka, many in the region are wondering what comes next for Belarus.

Belarus has no tradition of inherited succession, and Lukashenka has not cultivated the kind of North Korean cult of personality that would facilitate the transfer of power to one of his three sons. His eldest son, Viktar, is a presidential security adviser, but like all Belarusian officials, he keeps a low profile. His middle son, Dzmitry, has no position or public role. Lukashenka has occasionally taken his youngest son, Kolya, now 14, on official trips, but such appearances have not gone over well with Belarusians generally. In recent years, Kolya has been much less visible.

On 12 April 2007, Lukashenko stated that he planned to remain president for the foreseeable future. He denied categorically any plan to designate his eldest son Viktor, currently on the State Security Council, as his successor. He labeled his eldest son as too weak to take over his father's position. Lukashenko also denied that he was preparing his second son, Dmitry, to become president.

He did say that he might prepare a "third son" for the presidency. Lukashenko was referring to the young son he had with a mistress. Kolya, short for Nikolai, is the youngest of the president's three sons. It has been widely reported in Western media that he was born in 2004 as a result of an extra-marital affair between the president and his personal doctor.

The grooming of “Kolya,” as he is popularly known, began in 2008, when the four-year old child appeared alongside his father in military uniform to review an annual Independence Day parade in Minsk. Since then he emerged as Belarus’ president-in-waiting, accompanying his father on high-level diplomatic missions where foreign leaders treat the young boy as an official guest. “Dynastic succession is a long-term possibility. But Kolya is also very young, and that is very deliberate: it sends the message; ‘I may be grooming my son for power, but you won’t be rid of me anytime soon,” said Andrew Wilson, a senior policy fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations.

Largely kept out of the public spotlight, Lukashenko's separated wife, Galina, did not marry in a church because, according to Galina, that was a time when a church wedding was not allowed or accepted. It was her decision to stay in the rural village of Rizhkovichi when her husband became President. Galina's sons Viktor and Dima now live in Drozhdi, the same residential neighborhood as their father. The Drozhdi neighborhood is a complex of million-dollar homes where the president and his cronies all live. It was also the residential neighbor where foreign ambassadors lived until Lukashenko evicted them in 1997. Dima is a lawyer by trade and is now the chair of the Presidential Sport Club. Galina had three granddaughters, Viktoria, Anastasia and Daria, and one grandson, Aleksandr.

Allegedly, for a time the woman in Lukashenko's life was the daughter of the Minister of Health, who worked as Lukashenko's "personal nurse," handling his medications.

Miss Belarus 2018, Maria Vasilevich, elected deputy of Parliament, was involved in a media scandal after the British newspaper The Times pointed to a possible romantic bond with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The young woman accused the British media of having published false data. The reason why The Times and other media speculate about the romantic relationship between Vasilevich and Lukashenko is because the young woman has accompanied the Belarusian president to different events since she won the crown of the prestigious beauty pageant. She accompanied the Belarusian president to a hockey game, the international arts festival Slavianski Bazaar in Vitebsk, and even danced the waltz with Lukashenko during the celebration of the New Year in Minsk.