Lukashenko's Sports Madhouse

With his complaints against government officials, the governor has taken the situation to the point of absurdity.

A meeting between the ruler and officials at the Palace of Independence on June 16 has once again confirmed that Belarusian sports can expect no positive changes under Lukashenko, writes "Solidarnast".

Several times during the meeting, the president took his complaints against others to absurd extremes. Examples? Here you go.

“We need results! No results—no progress—no work!” Lukashenko declared, even though his own actions have led to Belarusian athletes being barred from competing in international competitions in many sports.

“It’s time to get to work,” Lukashenko told Sports Minister Sergei Kovalchuk, who has held his high-ranking position for a record 8 years—since the spring of 2018.

“If soccer players play the way our hockey players do, I’ll be more than happy to pay attention to soccer as well,” Lukashenko said.

Just to recap, the national hockey team last competed in the World Championship in 2021, finishing last in its group. Regarding the performance of Minsk’s “Dynamo” in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League, Lukashenko noted at the same meeting: “Where are our people? Why don’t they see that as many as half the team are imports?”

Lukashenko’s plan for sports development is extremely peculiar: at the meeting, he instructed the State Control Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to investigate sports clubs in Belarus…

The public has described the president’s behavior at the June 16 meeting with the pithy term “madhouse.”

Despite all of Lukashenko’s attempts to find scapegoats, the truth is that there isn’t a single person on Earth who has done more damage to the development of Belarusian sports than he has. Due to the ruler’s complicity in the military aggression against Ukraine, Belarusian athletes have been barred from competing in international competitions in many sports for four years now.

And within the country, many athletes and coaches have been deprived of the opportunity to continue their careers because of their disloyalty to Lukashenko and their condemnation of the repression. Take, for example, the legendary freestyle coach Nikolai Kozeko, whose protégés have won several Olympic medals for Belarus.

Overall, the June 16 meeting demonstrated once again that Belarusian sports can expect no positive changes under Lukashenko. It will take many years for this sector to climb out of its current slump.

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