As Lukashenko fights to the last, his son may be a successor
PICTURED last weekend sporting body armour and holding an assault rifle, Belarus’s embattled dictator has shown the world that he does not plan to go down without a fight. Yet as Alexander Lukashenko defies protesters calling for his downfall, it is not just his own fate that hangs in the balance. So does that of his 15-year-old son, Nikolai – his presumed heir.
Ever since he was old enough to walk, Nikolai has been paraded at his father’s side, meeting world leaders at the highest level. By the age of 11, he had been pictured with everyone from Barack Obama and the Pope through to China’s Xi Jinping.
Last weekend, he also had a starring role in his father’s belligerent photo op, dressed in military fatigues and likewise clutching an AK-47. One picture showed him and his father disembarking from a helicopter, accompanied by the riot police Mr Lukashenko has used to crack down on protesters. Another showed Nikolai guarding Mr Lukashenko in his palace in Minsk, as thousands demonstrated outside.
The photographs s of the pair together over the years have fuelled fears that Mr Lukashenko wants a North Korean-style dynastic regime – something opponents regard as their worst nightmare.
Nikolai is the youngest of Mr Lukashenko’s three sons, and believed to be the offspring of an affair with Irina Abelskaya, his former personal physician. The teenager has two adult siblings: Viktor, who sits on a national security council, and Dmitry, who chairs a state-run sports organisation.
Only Nikolai, though, has been groomed in public as a potential successor. Since his first appearance aged four, when he and his father reviewed the annual Independence Day parade in Minsk, he has been a regular presence when the president strides the world stage.
Nigel Gould-Davies, Britain’s former ambassador to Minsk, had to shake hands with him at a presidential reception in Minsk, when Nikolai was only five years old.
As he has come of age, Nikolai has carved a public profile in his own right, doing Soviet-style photo ops of visits to grain farms and OAP homes.
Last year, Mr Lukashenko denied that he was grooming his offspring to take over, insisting: “My children are not preparing for any power transfer.” Andrew Wilson, of University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies, said Nikolai was sometimes spoken of as “a potential successor”, although such a move would require major changes to Belarus’s constitution.
Criticising Mr Lukashenko’s regime was made more difficult yesterday after authorities revoked the press credentials of several journalists working for foreign media including the BBC and Reuters.