Stanislau Shushkevich: Lukashenka traveled across Russia's regions, pleasing governors and others

The dictator really wanted to get into the Kremlin.

In summer 1994, Lukashenka won the first presidential elections in Belarus. Interestingly, at that time the ruler was popular in Russia among those who, like Lukashenka himself, dreamed of a revival of the Soviet system and refused to accept a new world without the USSR, currenttime.tv reports.

Stanislau Shushkevich, who served as the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus in 1991-1994, says: "He [Lukashenka] is the only one who voted against the approval of the Belavezha Accords. Although he did not participate in the voting, it was his passionate desire.

Stanislau Shushkevich is the first head of independent Belarus. In December 1991, he signed the Belavezha Accords on the establishment of the CIS. Shushkevich recalls that in the second half of the 1990s, Lukashenka did make serious plans to win Yeltsin's place in the Kremlin: "He traveled across Russia's regions, pleasing governors and others, and pretended to be a fellow guy. He really wanted to get into the Kremlin - it's not a secret for anyone."

At that time, Lukashenka was touring the Russian regions almost more often than the Belarusian province, while at the same time promoting agreements on the Belarusian-Russian union integration. They would open the doors to the Kremlin through the establishment of supranational institutions of the Union State.

Against the background of the weakening Boris Yeltsin, the "'strong manager'" Lukashenka looked quite advantageous then. His rhetoric was close to the inhabitants of the Russian countryside and the military, for whom life in the Soviet Union was still a very fresh memory in those years. However, not everyone in Russia regarded the former chairman of the Gorodets state farm as the leader of the largest country in the world.

At the beginning of the 2000s, it seemed that Aliaksandr Lukashenka had lost interest in becoming president of Russia. At the same time, from 2002 onwards, the ruler of Belarus holds press tours for dozens of Russian regional journalists every year. Such trips end with a many-hour press conference. Many non-state journalists from Belarus have much less opportunity to talk to Lukashenka live.