Strongman Alexander Lukashenko has actually subjugated ex-Soviet Belarus for almost three years as well as says he can not bear to get rid of his “precious” country.
The 65-year-old won a sixth term in Sunday surveys, according to the main results, and also extremely crushed protests by challengers who assert he set up the ballot.
Regular Belarusians and independent observers implicate him of swiping the political election from 37-year-old Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, that has actually become the leader of the protest activity against his rule.
Doubters call the mustachioed leader “the roach.”
As Europe’s longest-serving non-royal leader, he has actually kept power considering that 1994.
He restrained his main resistance competitors ahead of Sunday’s poll and afterwards vowed he would certainly not enable opponents to “tear the country apart.”
Throughout an animated address to the country last week, Lukashenko wiped sweat from his brow as he implicated the resistance of intending mass troubles in the capital Minsk.
” We will not provide the nation to you,” he stated, talking in front of a glum-faced target market of authorities, church leaders and armed forces personnel.
He likened Belarus to a female, stating “You do not hand over your cherished.”
‘ Why cry now?’
After post-election demonstrations in which lots were harmed and a famous civil liberties team claimed that a person male was killed, Lukashenko defended the use of force.
” Why weep and also cry currently?” he said.
A dad of 3, Lukashenko commonly attends main occasions with his youngest son, 15-year-old Nikolai. His most current political election statement stated that he is still legally married although he is never seen in public with the better half he joined in 1975.
He has actually urged that Belarus is not ready for a female leader.
A female head of state “would certainly collapse, bad thing,” he claimed.
Amnesty International has charged Lukashenko’s federal government of “misogyny” and targeting female lobbyists with inequitable tactics.
Lukashenko has been recognized for his blunt-speaking folksiness as well as the previous collective farm supervisor is consistently imagined in rural settings like tractor manufacturing facilities or potato areas.
Despite 10s of hundreds of coronavirus infections, he has actually disregarded the pandemic as a hoax and refused to introduce a lockdown or delay the election.
He has actually provided uncertain ideas on staying clear of the infection, suggesting driving tractors in the countryside, alcohol consumption vodka and taking sauna bath.
Between Russia and West
Lukashenko has actually kept his landlocked homeland wedged in between Russia as well as EU participant Poland mainly embeded a Soviet time warp.
A quarter of a century after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. the securely regulated eastern European country still has a safety service called the KGB, abides by a command economic climate as well as seeks to previous master Moscow as its main ally, lender as well as energy service provider.
Yet Lukashenko has not been afraid to go across swords with the Kremlin as he nervously eyed its intervention in neighboring Ukraine and has looked for to repair fences with the West.
In February, he invited U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, making the first see to Belarus by a U.S. Secretary of State since 1994.
Despite repeating monetary dilemmas Lukashenko has actually stood firmly by Soviet-era financial policies.
He has actually also authorized the country approximately the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s animal job.
Yet while Belarus stays the most closely aligned previous Soviet republic to Moscow, Lukashenko urges he is no Kremlin patsy, typically switching from speaking Russian to Belarusian to show his freedom.
When Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine as well as was implicated of sparking a rebellion after the February 2014 ouster of Kiev’s Moscow-backed leader, Lukashenko appeared careful of Russia’s aggressiveness.
He has denied the idea of outright unification with Russia and has accused Moscow of meddling in the present governmental project.
Much less than two weeks prior to the surveys Belarus arrested greater than 30 Russian “militants,” saying they got on a goal to destabilize the nation.
The apprehensions triggered a situation in ties with Moscow, but after the widespread claims of blatant vote setting up Putin fasted to praise Lukashenko on his re-election.
By comparison, European federal governments doubted the results of Sunday’s election, with Belarus neighbor Poland requiring an emergency situation EU summit on the situation.