Lukashenko plainly enjoys power and doesn’t let it go to waste. He uses it to fuel a lavish lifestyle most Belarusians could barely imagine. According to the opposition video Lukashenko Goldmine, which has gone viral, his luxurious Independence Palace in Minsk cost a cool $250 million and he has 17 other properties around the country. Add in a fleet of planes and cars at his disposal and we are looking at yet another world-beating case of brutal public kleptocracy.
Lukashenko has honed it to an art because he has had a long time to practise. A former Soviet apparatchik in the mould of his friend and protector Vladimir Putin, he grabbed power in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like Putin, he uses the whole arsenal of repressive tactics – arbitrary arrests, disappearances, heavy-handed policing against protesters, shutting down media voices to keep ‘opposition scum’ in line. Perhaps more than any other post-Soviet head of state, he has maintained and adapted the symbols and institutions of the Stalinist past. His modus operandi is to call ‘elections’ which he duly manipulates, ‘winning’ by a standard 80 per cent, give or take, depending what his inner circle believes the optics require. Sadly for this tidy little arrangement, ordinary Belarusians are proving less and less malleable.
