Lukashenka as “black spot”

As soon as Berlusconi managed to grow new teeth instead of knocked out ones, a new ill-minded person with an ice hockey stick tried to steal into his hospital ward, a well-known journalist Iryna Khalip writes.

Do not think that I am gloating: men with ice hockey sticks are as disgusting for me as Berlusconi himself. I am speaking about different things. There was man named Silvio, and nobody attacked him, neither with fists, nor with stick, until he went hugging Lukashenka. And right on his return to Italy not just a run of bad luck, but a season of adversities which are dangerous for life and health. And if the price for meeting with Lukashenka is broken teeth and fractured nose and a maniac with an ice hockey stick, all the other potential friends of the dictator should think twice before opening out their embrace: what will follow after that? Moreover, Berlusconi is not the first victim of friendship with Lukashenka.

A few days after the meeting with the last dictator of Europe

For instance, there was Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis. Nobody remembers him now. On February 18-19, 2009 he visited Minsk and met with Lukashenka. On the next day after he returned to Riga, Godmanis retired. It’s true, he was not beaten by anyone. But he hadn’t been speaking about endless friendship, they signed a joint memorandum about intentions in the sphere of energetic, nothing more. So he got off with nothing more than a fright. And in the case of Berlusconi, it is not the end of troubles, it seems to be just a beginning. And not only in the area of his face.

And dearest Pavel Borodin, before he became the head of the union state enterprise, acquired an office in Minsk and started regular meetings with Lukashenka, had no problems. He liked to tell abut his labour deeds at the position of the Charge-d’Affairs of the Kremlin, as if huge rats were running around before he took the position, officials and Yelstin were walking around waist-deep in the water, and by a hocus-pocus he turned the Kremlin into a thing as neat as a new pin. He was so proud by the repaired Kremlin, as if it was his own summer cottage. But as soon as he left the cottage, he settled down in Minsk and mad friends with Lukashenka, a US arrest warrant was brought right to the ramp of the plane in which he landed in New York in 2001. In April Pavel Borodin was released from prison. But since then he can travel only along the route Minsk-Moscow without turning anywhere else. The whole Western world is closed for him. That’s why Borodin is chirping that the European Union would join the union state soon. He is simply dreaming of Paris.

Pavel Borodin has presentiments

One can also recall one more dearly loved guest, US Congressman Curt Weldon, who dared to meet with Lukashenka in 2002, in the same period of time when none of Western officials would take the same side of the street with Lukashenka. Weldon arrived, had long conversations, and the state-run Belarusian TV BT then told that isolation of Belarus had finished, a breakthrough in the Western front started, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka would soon be invited to the White House for a cup of tea.

Congressman Curt Weldon has to find excuses for many things

A breakthrough really started, but in an unexpected place. After the visit to Minsk the FBI got interested in his activities, and it turned out that the Congressman was bribed for lobbying interests of companies and private individuals, including friends and partners of Slobodan Milosevic, Dragomir and Bogoljub Karic. Weldon’s business partner Cecilia Grimes already faced trial for suppression of evidence against the Congressman and found guilty. Investigation against Weldon continues, but his political career ended ingloriously. Even if he is not imprisoned, he won’t be able to lobby anybody’s interests any more.

By the way, about Milosevic. Lukashenka wanted to hide “Friend Slobo” in Belarus, for no tribunals to find him. But in 2001 he by chance appeared in the prison in The Hague instead of the residence in Drazdy, and he died there without leaving his friend Alyaksandr any hope for happy future and peaceful death in his own bed. Another good friend of Drazdy dweller, Saddam Hussein, was executed. And his sons who met with Lukashenka, were murdered even earlier. After arrest several Belarusian passports for different names were found in the things of Saddam’s personal secretary, which was the last nail battered down in his coffin. He died in prison in January 2004 before the trial started.

Dictator Milosevic still does not know what was in store for him

It would be a different matter if only dictators, corruptionists, international criminals and rascals were meant: first he meets with Lukashenka, and then goes to prison (dies, is dismissed, not reelected, becomes a suspect in an investigation – please underline as appropriate). But the same things happen to innocent sheep from show-business and sport, when they want to make friends with Lukashenka. For example, a hockey player Pavel Bure visited Minsk before the election in 2001. He was so thankful for hospitality, that he licked boots of the receiving side: “It is certainly pleasant that not a rickety old man leads the country, but a powerful man who is able not to get tired. One can feel on firm ground behind such wide shoulders”.

Wide shoulders haven’t helped: in half a year Pavel Bure broke his hand, and after that his sports career ended in silence. Later another lady from Russian beau-monde, ballet dancer Anastasiya Volochkova, who intruded to Lukashenka’s friends, broke her arm as well, by the way. In 2003 she visited Minks as the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi theatre. She danced at the largest stage of the largest hall, met with Lukashenka, and then shared her impressions with journalists: “The Belarusian leader is a very talented organizer, who is able to rally people around himself and carry out a humane policy at the highest level! If there would be proposals to dance in concerts in his support, I would eagerly accept them”. Three were no offers, but soon after her return from Minsk Volochkova got the bounce and with scandal left the Bolshoi and now works in Krasnodar. And besides, she takes part in the TV program “Ice age” where she traditionally gets lowest marks. And as before, she naively accuses Xenia Sobchak of being the reason of all her troubles.

Pavel Bure was not rescued by Lukashenka’s “wide shoulders”

One would think, what Lukashenka has to do with all that? The matter is, according to old wives stories, it is an omen of misfortune to meet a woman with empty buckets. Lukashenka is a kind of a person with empty buckets. But he is not appearing in the streets unexpectedly. He jumps out in front of a visitor in a narrow corridor in order to give him no chances to escape. So the only chance to avoid trouble is simply not to go to those corridors and not come near the places where Lukashenka may appear. And those who meet with him, and not because they are obliged to, but out of their own free will, have only themselves to blame. And those who doubt these superstitious beliefs only because Putin and Medvedev talk to Lukashenka often, and are not prone to this pest, I can explain: they belong to the same company of “circulators of infection”. And their buckets are empty as well.

Lukashenka and Turkmenistan’s late leader Saparmurad Niyazov

”Eternal” Fidel had to step down