Category Archives: Alexander Lukashenko

Belarusian president signs law granting him lifelong immunity from prosecution

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Alexander Lukashenko’s law also bars exiled opposition leaders from standing in presidential elections

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed a new law granting him lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution and preventing opposition leaders living in exile from running in future presidential elections.

The law theoretically applies to any former president and members of his or her family. In reality, it is only relevant to the 69-year-old Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for almost 30 years.

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Belarus leader proposes three-way partnership with Russia and North Korea

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Alexander Lukashenko put forward axis plan during summit with Vladimir Putin in Sochi as rumours of arms deal persist

Alexander Lukashenko has expressed interest in creating a trilateral partnership with Russia and North Korea amid rumours that Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un were negotiating an arms deal to sustain Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Belarusian leader made the remarks during a summit with Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where the two held their seventh face-to-face meeting this year.

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Warsaw sends troops to border, accusing Belarus of violating its airspace

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Polish military says army helicopters crossed eastern flank, adding to tensions caused by proximity of Wagner fighters

Poland has rushed troops to its eastern border after accusing Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters.

The Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused Poland, a Nato member and one of Ukraine’s most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of inventing the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops.

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Anti-Lukashenko artist Ales Pushkin dies in Belarus prison aged 57

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Artist who once depicted authoritarian leader in hell died in ‘unclear circumstances’, his wife says

A Belarusian artist who once dumped manure outside the office of the president, Alexander Lukashenko, has died in prison, where he was serving a five-year sentence.

Ales Pushkin died in the prison in Grodno in western Belarus of an unknown cause, even though the 57-year-old was not known to be sick, the Viasna human rights centre said on Tuesday.

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‘We have ambitious plans’: Anti-Putin forces plan fresh attacks inside Russia

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Leader of cross-border raids from Ukraine says weapons, not words, are needed to overthrow the regime in Moscow

The commander of the Freedom of Russia Legion says his fighters are planning another cross-border raid into Russia and are seeking to capitalise on disarray inside the Kremlin following the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“There will be a further surprise in the next month or so,” Caesar, a spokesperson for the anti-Putin paramilitary group, said in an interview with the Observer in Kyiv. “It will be our third operation. After that there will be a fourth, and fifth. We have ambitious plans. We want to free all our territory.”

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Wagner boss Prigozhin has returned to Russia, Lukashenko says

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Belarus president says head of mercenary group behind failed mutiny is in St Petersburg

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who last month brokered a deal to end Wagner’s armed mutiny, has said the head of the mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has returned to Russia.

“As for Prigozhin, he’s in St Petersburg. He is not on the territory of Belarus,” Lukashenko told reporters. “Where is Prigozhin this morning? Maybe he left for Moscow.”

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Belarusian leader confirms arrival of exiled Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin

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Moscow claims paramilitaries have agreed to hand over weapons after failed Rostov uprising

The Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin flew into exile in Belarus on his private jet on Tuesday, as Moscow claimed the paramilitary force had agreed to hand over its weapons after the group’s failed insurrection.

“Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today,” the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said in comments first reported by Belta, the country’s national news agency.

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‘I’m insanely thankful to the president’: how a Belarus dissident became an apologist for the regime

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Raman Pratasevich was dragged off a plane and imprisoned two years ago. Now he praises the regime he used to denounce

Two years ago, Raman Pratasevich, a young Belarusian dissident blogger, was white-knuckled, begging a Ryanair flight crew not to make an emergency landing at Minsk airport.

He said: “Don’t do this, they will kill me, I am a refugee,” according to a fellow passenger. The plane, escorted by a Belarusian Mig-29 fighter jet sent to force it down, landed anyway. Pratasevich was promptly arrested.

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Belarusian Nobel peace prize winner moved to brutal prison

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Ales Bialiatski has been in jail for 20 months following mass protests over regime of Alexander Lukashenko

The Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski has been transferred to a notoriously brutal prison in Belarus and has not been heard from in a month, his wife has said.

Natalia Pinchuk said that Bialiatski, who is serving a 10-year sentence, has been kept in an information blackout since his transfer to the N9 colony for repeat offenders in the city of Gorki, where inmates are beaten and subjected to hard labour.

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Images of Lukashenko released after rumours over Belarusian leader’s health

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Authorities posted photographs and video on Telegram channel after authoritarian ruler missed events

Belarusian authorities have released photographs and video of Alexander Lukashenko, attempting to put an end to a week of speculation about the authoritarian leader’s health.

The footage showed Lukashenko visiting an army control point, but the ruler’s heavily bandaged arm and hoarse, exhausted voice appeared to confirm rumours that he has been in poor health.

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Belarus president Lukashenko misses another event prompting speculation of illness

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Leader has not been seen publicly in nearly a week, as opposition news outlet says he was taken to an elite clinic on weekend

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who has not been seen in public since 8 May, did not appear at a ceremony in the capital of Minsk on Sunday, triggering speculation the longtime leader is seriously ill.

The prime minister, Roman Golovchenko, read a message from Lukashenko during an annual ceremony at which young people swear allegiance to the ex-Soviet state’s flag, the BelTA state news agency reported.

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Putin’s timeline for storing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus is hard to believe

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Although Alexander Lukashenko has agreed to host nuclear bases little construction work seems to have started

Like a lot of what Vladimir Putin says about nuclear weapons, his suggestion that Russia would start storing its bombs in Belarus may add up to less than it appears.

In February last year, Putin said he was putting Russia’s nuclear arsenal on high alert, but there was no perceptible change in the country’s nuclear posture, or any unusual movements of its weapons.

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Belarus jails senior staff at independent news site in crackdown on Lukashenko critics

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Twelve-year sentences for the women condemned as president’s ‘revenge’ while UN report accuses country of possible crimes against humanity

Belarus has handed long jail terms to senior staff at the country’s largest independent news site, which was forced to close after historic demonstrations against strongman Alexander Lukashenko over two years ago.

The verdicts are the latest in a crackdown on journalists, opposition figures and activists who challenged Lukashenko’s claim that he won a sixth presidential term in 2020.

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Belarus partisans say they blew up Russian plane near Minsk

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Group says it used drones to hit early warning aircraft at Machulishchy airfield 12km from Minsk

Belarusian anti-war partisans claim to have severely damaged a Russian military aircraft in what an opposition leader has called the “most successful diversion” since the beginning of the war.

BYPOL, the Belarusian partisan organisation, said it had used drones to strike the Machulishchy airfield 12km from Minsk, severely damaging a Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft (Awacs).

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Vladimir Putin insists Russia will achieve its ‘noble’ goals in Ukraine

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President dismisses killing of civilians in Bucha by Russian forces as ‘fake’

Vladimir Putin has insisted that his bloody campaign in Ukraine will continue until its “noble” goals have been achieved, arguing that the invasion was proceeding as planned, despite fierce Ukrainian resistance and heavy losses among Russian forces.

“We will achieve our objectives, there are no doubts,” Putin told workers at the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia’s far east, in his first public comments on the war since his forces were forced to retreat from northern Ukraine more than a week ago.

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Civilians flee eastern Ukraine ahead of new Russian offensive

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Governor of Luhansk urges people to evacuate as Vladimir Putin insists Moscow will achieve its ‘noble’ aims

Civilians have fled eastern Ukraine in advance of a forecast attack, as Russian forces closed in on the ruins of Mariupol – where 21,000 civilians have reportedly died – and Vladimir Putin said Moscow’s invasion would proceed “calmly” and to plan.

Ukrainian forces in the east dug in on Tuesday for a major new Russian offensive, with the governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Gaidai, urging all residents to evacuate as soon as possible using agreed humanitarian corridors. “It’s far more scary to remain and to burn in your sleep from a Russian shell,” Gaidai said on social media. “Evacuate: with every day the situation is getting worse. Take your essential items and head to the pickup point.”

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Belarus may be about to send its troops into Ukraine, US official says

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Move could happen this week as official says Minsk is ‘now an extension of the Kremlin’

Belarus may be preparing to send its soldiers into Ukraine in support of the Russian invasion, perhaps as soon as this week, according to a US defence official, amid mounting concern about Minsk’s military preparations.

Belarus has already been used as a staging post by Russian forces, who gathered there on the pretext of joint military exercises before last week’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now there is increasing evidence that Minsk may be moving towards becoming an explicit participant in the war.

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‘We are in limbo’: banned Belarus theatre troupe forced into exile

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Members of Belarus Free Theatre say authorities ‘are more scared of artists than of political statements’

For 16 years, the Belarus Free Theatre has advocated for freedom of expression, equality and democracy through underground performances from ad hoc locations to audiences hungry for an alternative voice to the country’s repressive dictator, Alexander Lukashenko.

Now the banned company has taken the momentous decision to relocate outside Belarus, saying the risk of reprisals against its members is too great for it to continue its cultural resistance under the Lukashenko regime.

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Lukashenko says Belarusian troops may have helped refugees reach Europe

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Leader acknowledges it was ‘absolutely possible’ his army had a part in creating migrant crisis at Polish border

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged that his troops probably helped Middle Eastern asylum seekers cross into Europe, in the clearest admission yet that he engineered the new migrant crisis on the border with the EU.

In an interview with the BBC at his presidential palace in Minsk, he said it was “absolutely possible” that his troops helped migrants across the frontier into Poland.

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One-year-old Syrian child dies in forest on Poland-Belarus border

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Boy is youngest known victim of crisis as medical workers say family was living in forest for a month

A one-year-old child from Syria has died in a forest in Poland near the border with Belarus, according to Polish medical workers, becoming the youngest known victim of the crisis on the eastern edge of the European Union.

Thousands of people attempting to reach the EU are still stranded in freezing conditions, amid a standoff between the bloc and Belarus, which has been accused of deliberately creating the crisis by flying in people from the Middle East and facilitating their travel to the border.

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