In a rambling and often unhinged eight-hour press conference this week, Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka appeared to make some news by declaring that he would soon resign as the country’s president.
Lukashenka said he was not “clinging to this office with all my might. No, other people will come after me and it will be very soon.” He then added, “Don’t indulge in guessing when Lukashenka is going to step down. Very soon.”
One interpretation is that this was just the latest example of the nonsensical and erratic statements Lukashenka regularly makes, and should be taken with the usual grain of salt. In the same press conference, Lukashenka also said his brutal crackdown on dissent had helped avert World War III, and in an utterly bizarre claim, said that his security services arrested the dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich after effectively hijacking Ryanair Flight 4978 on orders from the West.
Few in attendance sensed that Lukashenka was genuinely preparing to depart the political arena. In a commentary for MK, Russian journalist Mikhail Rostovsky wrote that the atmosphere of the event and Lukashenka’s general demeanor was not consistent with that of “a politician who is about to give up power.”
Noting the photo exhibition celebrating the Belarusian strongman’s career and the adoring and applauding pro-regime journalists assembled, Rostovsky wrote that “the whole pathos of the event was just the opposite. Lukashenka purposefully tried to draw a line under the [recent] period of powerful political instability in Belarus, to start a new period in the modern history of the republic, in which there is no longer any place for attempts to overthrow him.”
Likewise, the Belarusian political commentator Dmitry Bolkunets noted in an interview with Lenta.ru, “for many years Lukashenka has been saying he is ready to leave, he is tired of power, he is tired of the presidency. But he remains. He won’t leave, at least not voluntarily.”