Belarus dictator’s household loves EU luxuries, flight information reveals

She is certainly one of hundreds of victims of Lukashenko’s crackdown towards individuals who rejected his faux re-election in 2020 — an ongoing horror present that dangers being forgotten amid the every day headlines of Russia’s battle in Ukraine.

Lukashenko himself, his two grownup sons Dmitry and Viktor, in addition to Viktor’s spouse Liliya, are all on EU visa-ban and asset-freeze lists.

However the president’s youngest son, Kolya (a scholar), Dmitry’s spouse Anna Lukashenko, and a number of other minor kin have not been blacklisted.

And as Anna’s dictator father-in-law continues to inflict distress on folks like Kolesnikova, the leaked flight information present the form of luxurious that the ruling clan likes to take pleasure in within the coronary heart of Europe, given the prospect.

In a single journey in January 2018, as an example, Anna, her sister, and their households flew to the French Alps for 11 days, from the place they posted an image within the two-Michelin star restaurant, the l’Atelier d’Edmond in Val-d’Isère, the place a boozy dinner, containing delicacies comparable to frog’s legs in horseradish, prices over €400 per particular person.

In 2017, Anna and her household additionally went snowboarding in Innsbruck (Austria), celebrated her birthday in a 25-day lengthy splurge in Cagliari (Italy) on a non-public jet, and visited the five-star Banana Island Resort in Doha.

The flight information, overlaying the interval 2011 to 2019, was obtained by Belarusian hacker-activists Cyber Partisans and printed by a bunch of journalists in exile referred to as the Belarusian Investigative Middle.

The price of the 2017 and 2018 journeys alone could be at the very least €480,000 — manner past Anna and her husband’s declared joint incomes of some €80,000, the Belarusian Investigative Middle famous, in a evident signal of regime corruption.

It’s unknown what Anna is doing as of late or if she and her entourage nonetheless use their EU journey perks.

However information present that in 2018 and 2020 she used to work in BelAZ Buying and selling Home, which sells Belarusian vehicles and machine components in Russia.

Her husband Dmitry is chairman of the state-public affiliation, the Presidential Sports activities Membership, which EU sanctions paperwork describe as a entrance for Lukashenko-family enterprise pursuits.

Anna’s sister and brother-in-law (Tatiana Kulakova and Volodymyr Kulakov) are additionally within the household agency.

Tatiana, who typically holidayed within the EU with Anna, works for a state-funded TV manufacturing firm, whereas Volodymyr runs the Tennis Membership a part of Dmitry Lukashenko’s sports activities empire.

Tatiana additionally has a small chain of garments retailers, certainly one of which is situated in the identical mall as Liliya Lukashenko’s artwork gallery in Minsk.

In the meantime, Anna’s journey to EU cities through the years additionally included Barcelona, Ljubljana, Frankfurt, Munich, Pisa, Thessaloniki, and Vienna, the flight information confirmed.

And among the journeys highlighted the Lukashenko household’s enterprise ties in Europe.

In 2017, as an example, Anna and her husband Dmitry flew residence from a birthday journey in Cagliari to Minsk with a Slovenian businessman, Zivorad Smiljković from the Ljubljana-based agency Riko, which has received hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of building contracts in Belarus.

In 2019, Smiljković additionally flew with Lukashenko’s closest kin from Sion (Switzerland) to the Belarusian capital.

However not the entire dictator’s associates are so fortunate.

Lukashenko’s presidential jet, a VIP-model of a Boeing-767, has golden bathroom bowls, Belarusian activists revealed in 2021.

However when Lukashenko visited Yerevan final week, his long-serving overseas minister, Viktor Makai, flew residence on a cargo aircraft, amid overboard temperatures of minus 60 levels Celsius and in onboard temperatures of not more than 10 levels Celsius.

Makai could be seen rubbing his chilly, anxious palms collectively in an interview with the CTV.by broadcaster one week in the past — shortly earlier than he died, immediately, on 26 November.

The EU final up to date its Belarus sanctions, which additionally contains financial measures, in March on grounds of Belarus’ “position within the Russian army aggression of Ukraine”.

Its earlier sanctions coated folks accountable for “unacceptable violence towards peaceable protesters” and people “intently linked with various high-profile firms which have benefited from the Lukashenko regime”.

Nosebleed

“The present sanctions on Belarus are reviewed recurrently in gentle of the developments on the bottom,” an EU overseas service spokesman stated, when requested if any additional blacklistings had been within the pipeline.

The Belarusian opposition in exile in Estonia has additionally circulated a file to EU diplomats, seen by EUobserver, calling for “extra devastating financial sanctions” and for Europe to “discover and freeze property of Lukashenko’s household and its wallets”.

However actually, not a lot is going on on Lukashenko in Brussels.

“There is no proposal [for more Belarus sanctions] on the desk. We’re speaking in regards to the subsequent Russia sanctions bundle, however there’s nothing on Belarus,” an EU diplomat stated.

One other EU supply stated: “Even the brand new Russia sanctions are transferring forward like a sluggish nosebleed, resulting from fatigue, which is reprehensible given the extent of strange folks’s struggling”.

The EU embassy in Minsk was making enquiries in regards to the well being of Kolesnikova, the jailed opposition chief, the supply stated, in what they referred to as “silent diplomacy”.

Requested what must occur in Belarus to set off an additional spherical of EU measures, the supply added: “Let’s pray nothing occurs as a result of folks there already cannot breathe anyway”.

But when there was to be one other spherical, it could doubtless goal the remaining “flowers” of the regime clan, in addition to sanctions circumventers, propagandists, and law-enforcement officers, the EU supply added.

Lukashenko’s scholar son, Kolya, would by no means be focused due to his youth, until he had “personally dedicated a drastic crime”, the supply stated.

“But when Anna [Lukashenko] continues to be fortunately flying across the EU, we needs to be looking at that,” the supply added.