A secret was made out of Lukashenka’s holiday

A “short-term” visit, as the Lukashenka’s press-service had called it, lasted for almost 10 days.

Today the Belarusian leader returned to Minsk. All this time Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s stay in Switzerland was kept in strict secret. And that concerned not only “confidential meetings” announced by the spokesperson of the Belarusian leader Pavel Lyohki, but also negotiations with Swiss politicians and businessmen in the so-called “open format” combined with the meetings. The holiday which Lukashenka wanted to “combine with the business part” was made confidential as well.

Some details have been found out by Radio Svaboda from the circles of Swiss politicians and public leaders, who are related to Belarusian by their work.

Lukashenka has spent his holiday in an Alpine resort in the east of the country. The weather was fine there. From time to time snowdrifts happen. So many Swiss have cancelled their preplanned trips to favorite Alpine resorts.

It has been done recently by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and the Swiss Foreign Ministry Micheline Calmy-Rey. As said by the well-known Swiss politician and PACE member Andreas Gross, it had been planned that she would use the visit of the Belarusian leader to Switzerland and visit him during his holiday there, in order to try to persuade him to cancel death penalty and facilitate the process of rapprochement to Europe.

But the meeting hadn’t happened because of the weather. Instead of that Micheline Calmy-Rey held a meeting is Munich with the head of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus, and Belarus demonstrated its unwillingness in this issue.

As for the absolute silence of the local media, it firstly shows that the holiday had been made secret and appropriate safety measures taken. And secondly, absence of interest to this topic especially amid scandals connected with the leak of information about deposits of foreign clients in Swiss banks.