A tweet that went around the world in a few hours. «According to preliminary information, subject to further confirmation, Lukashenko was rushed to Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital after his closed-door meeting with Putin». This was written by Valery Tsepkalo, a Belarusian diplomat and opponent of the president Alexander Lukashenko. But who is Tsepkalo? And why did his indiscretion, which at the moment remains unconfirmed, open the yellow on the possible poisoning?
Meanwhile, after rumors about his health, Lukashenko reappeared with a message, published by his press service and circulated by Tass, wishing Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev and all Azerbaijanis on their national holiday of the country, Independence Day. “I am deeply convinced that the strategic partnership between Minsk and Baku, which is based on mutual interest and traditionally friendly and trusting ties, will continue to strengthen, acquiring new forms and directions,” he writes.
Who is Tsepkalo, Lukashenko’s opponent
Tsepkalo, 58, is a Belarusian politician. After graduating from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and serving at the Embassy of the Soviet Union in Finland, he joined the staff of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He later became an adviser on foreign political and economic relations to the Speaker of the Parliament Stanislav Shushkevich and then a senior adviser to the secretary general of the Commonwealth of Independent States. At 29, he led Alexander Lukashenko’s presidential campaign in 1994 and later assumed the post of first deputy minister of foreign affairs. From 1997 to 2002, he served as Ambassador of Belarus to the United States and Mexico. In 2005-2006 he was presidential plenipotentiary envoy to Parliament. Valery Tsepkalo is considered one of the architects of the country’s only significant economic success: in 2005 he founded the Belarus High Technologies Park (HTP) and led it until 2017 creating the largest IT cluster in Central and Eastern Europe.
In May 2020, he aimed straight for the presidency by running for election: thus he became one of the main challengers of the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. On July 24, 2020, Valery Tsepkalo fled to Russia with his children after receiving a tip that his arrest was imminent and the authorities were ready to deprive him of parental rights.
The sentence
On April 7, 2023, Valery Tsepkalo was sentenced to 17 years in a maximum security penal colony. A Minsk court tried him in absentia. The charges against him included nine different types of crime, including wanting to provoke a coup and creating and funding an extremist organization defamatory of the current president. Tsepkalo had planned to run for president of Belarus in 2020. When the electoral authority refused to register him as a candidate, he fled the country, fearing arrest. Tsepkalo’s wife Veronika Tsepkalo then formed a “triumvirate of women” together with politicians Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Maria Kalesnikava. After the failed elections, Tsikhanouskaya was forced to flee the country and Kalesnikava was arrested and later jailed. Earlier this year, a Belarusian court sentenced Tsikhanouskaya to 15 years, also in absentia.
What Tsepkalo said
“According to preliminary information, subject to further confirmation, Lukashenko was rushed to Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital following his closed-door meeting with Putin. Leading specialists have been mobilized to address his critical condition,” Tsepkalo explains. A staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko, 68, reappeared in public on May 15 after an absence of nearly a week and after missing the Flag Day ceremony for the first time since he assumed the highest office of the state of the former Soviet republic, 29 years ago. The appearance of him, with a showy band on his arm, hadn’t dampened the doubts of those who believed he was seriously ill or, even, that he had been poisoned. Some thought that it was the Kremlin that tried to kill Putin’s satrap. Hypotheses that are found in the words of Tsepkalo, who wrote on Twitter that in the hospital where he is hospitalized “blood purification procedures were carried out” and that “the efforts orchestrated to save the Belarusian dictator aim to dispel speculation about the alleged involvement of the Kremlin in its poisoning”. In any case, Lukashenko’s conditions were deemed “so serious as to advise against the transfer” and the Belarusian opposition wants to be ready in case the dictator should pass away. For this reason Tsekpalo, as a representative of the Democratic Forum of the Republic of Belarus, “strongly urges Western leaders to convene a strategic session in the coming days to discuss the ‘Elections’ initiative and other measures to be taken to ensure the transition period » because «holding the elections at such a critical moment will not only help restore law and order in the future Belarus, but will also lay the foundations for stabilizing the situation on the borders of the European Union and the world».
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