莫斯科——当亚历山大·卢卡申科在1994年成为总统时，白俄罗斯是一个默默无闻的国家，甚至三年都不存在。在接下来的四分之一世纪里，他通过戏剧性的镇压、古怪的行为和五颜六色的威胁让世界注意到了这一点。
周日，一架商业客机被迫改道，机上一名反对派人士被捕，这是他统治的缩影。
他对民主规范和该国糟糕的人权记录的蔑视使白俄罗斯成为西方的贱民，给他带来了“欧洲最后的独裁者”的绰号。
66岁的卢卡申科更喜欢被称为“巴特卡”——父亲或“爸爸”——一个严厉但明智的族长，领导一个国家走出婴儿期。
尽管卢卡申科偶尔会采取措施与西方和解，但在2020年第六次当选总统后，反对他的大规模示威游行后，他放弃了和解。反对派和许多西方人认为选举结果被操纵而拒绝接受。
数万名抗议者被捕，其中许多人遭到警察殴打;主要反对派人物要么逃离该国，要么被监禁;外国记者被驱逐出境;据报道，普通公民因所谓的“未经授权的大规模集会”，如生日聚会和自行车比赛而被捕。"
卢卡申科通过严厉的警察行动和任意逮捕压制反对派，同时将大部分经济置于国家控制之下，使白俄罗斯成为新苏联的局外人，对其繁荣的北约和欧盟邻国保持警惕。他时而和俄罗斯争吵，时而讨好俄罗斯。
他以善变的行为和挑衅性的言论而闻名，一份泄露的美国外交电报将其评估为彻头彻尾的“怪异”
在2006年一个众所周知的好战时刻，他威胁抗议者说他会“像拧鸭子一样拧断他们的脖子”。今年圣诞节期间，他在厨房接受电视采访时也引起了不安，当时他让他毛茸茸的小狗在桌子上的节日菜肴中散步。
周日，他下令一架战斗机拦截一架飞往立陶宛的商业客机，这架客机搭载了他的一名自我放逐的对手——记者拉曼·普拉塔塞维奇(Raman Pratasevich)。白俄罗斯当局表示，这一行动是在飞机受到炸弹威胁后采取的，但西方官员认为这是掩盖海盗行为的荒谬企图。
身材魁梧的卢卡申科经常打冰球，展现了一个硬汉的形象，包括2020年的一次春游，他在春游中问一名电视记者是否看到任何病毒在竞技场上“飞来飞去”，从而打消了冠状病毒的念头。
卢卡申科曾被国人视为反腐败领袖，但由于几十年来监禁对手、扼杀独立媒体和举行选举使他一届又一届掌权，他失去了他们的信任。
一些选举后爆发了抗议活动，但规模不够大，持续时间不够长，不足以抵挡挥棒警察和大规模拘留。直到2020年投票后，他的对手似乎才控制住了不满:该国的经济恶化和卢卡申科傲慢地拒绝采取行动对抗冠状病毒增加了他们对镇压的长期沮丧。
抗议持续了几个月，直到冬天来临才逐渐平息。但当局并没有松口，据报道，他们在没有明显原因的情况下或者以穿着反对派红白相间的服装等借口逮捕了一些人。
卢卡申科出生在白俄罗斯的一个村庄，遵循着雄心勃勃的省级苏维埃的传统道路。从农学院毕业后，他成为边防部队的政治指导员，并最终晋升为一个集体农场的主任。1990年，他成为白俄罗斯最高苏维埃，共和国议会的成员。
他是1991年投票反对苏联解体的唯一成员。三年后，当他赢得这个新国家的第一次总统选举时，他在许多方面似乎是一个被困在时间里的人，让白俄罗斯成为一个怪异和功能失调的苏联遗迹。
当邻近的前苏联共和国适应资本主义时，卢卡申科将白俄罗斯的大部分经济置于国家控制之下。这一策略最初赢得了他的支持，因为白俄罗斯人没有遭受“休克疗法”经济重组的困惑和剥夺。
但是僵化的国家工业控制跟不上市场经济的活力和灵活性;白俄罗斯卢布被迫多次贬值，截至2020年，平均月工资仅为区区480美元。
在卢卡申科的统治下，该国的主要安全机构保留了其象征性的恶意缩写克格勃。他还推动了全民公决，使新国旗几乎与白俄罗斯作为苏维埃共和国使用的国旗相同。
与欧洲其他国家不同，白俄罗斯也继续执行死刑，其方式令人毛骨悚然，与苏联的展示审判处决如出一辙。据报道，囚犯被带到一个房间，并被告知所有上诉都被驳回。然后死刑犯被迫下跪，后脑勺中枪，这个过程从头到尾持续约两分钟。
卢卡申科就任总统时，白俄罗斯作为独立国家的经验很少;在成为苏维埃共和国之前，它是其他帝国的一部分，在第一次世界大战后，它只是短暂地试图获得主权。白俄罗斯夹在东方的俄罗斯和西方的改革派波兰、立陶宛和拉脱维亚之间，处于战略地位。
卢卡申科强烈地向东倾斜。1997年，他与俄罗斯签署了一项协议，成立一个经济、军事和政治联系紧密的“联盟国家”，但没有完全合并。
该协议支撑了白俄罗斯的经济，该国经济严重依赖低于市场价格的俄罗斯石油。但是卢卡申科认为俄罗斯的目标是最终完全接管白俄罗斯，他对此越来越直言不讳。
俄罗斯显然对卢卡申科不再抱有幻想，怀疑莫斯科希望他下台，并在2020年试图削弱他。俄罗斯国有天然气垄断企业俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司(Gazprom)旗下一家银行的前行长被视为主要的选举挑战者，在此之前，他被监禁，并被排除在投票之外。与此同时，白俄罗斯指控俄罗斯派遣私人军事承包商破坏选举。
卢卡申科多年的压迫和残暴几乎烧毁了他与西方的桥梁。面对大规模抗议，除了莫斯科，他无处求助。
俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京(Vladimir Putin)表示，如果示威变成暴力，他准备派警察帮助稳定局势，但他从未采取行动。
Dictator or 'Dad'? Belarus leader suppresses all dissent
MOSCOW -- When Alexander Lukashenko became its president in 1994, Belarus was an obscure country that had not even existed for three years. Over the next quarter-century, he brought it to the world’s notice through dramatic repression, erratic behavior and colorful threats.
Sunday's forced diversion of a commercial airliner and arrest of an opposition figure who was aboard epitomized his rule.
His disdain for democratic norms and country’s dismal human rights record has made Belarus a pariah in the West, bringing him the sobriquet of “Europe’s last dictator.”
The 66-year-old Lukashenko prefers to be styled as “Batka” — “Father” or “Dad” —a stern but wise patriarch leading a country out of infancy.
Although he has made occasional moves toward rapprochement with the West, Lukashenko abandoned conciliation after massive demonstrations rose up against him in 2020 following an election to a sixth term as president. The opposition, and many in the West, rejected the outcome as rigged.
Tens of thousands of protesters were arrested, many of them beaten by police; main opposition figures either fled the country or were jailed; foreign journalists were driven out of the country; and ordinary citizens reportedly were arrested for so-called “unauthorized mass gatherings” such as birthday parties and bicycle races. “
By suppressing opposition through harsh police actions and arbitrary arrests, along with keeping much of the economy under state control, Lukashenko made Belarus into a neo-Soviet outlier, wary of its thriving NATO and European Union neighbors. He alternately quarreled with and cozied up to Russia.
He’s noted for mercurial actions and provocative statements, which a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable assessed as outright “bizarre.”
In a famously bellicose moment in 2006, he threatened protesters by saying he would “wring their necks like a duck.” He also attracted uneasy note this year during a Christmas season TV interview in his kitchen when he let his little fluffy dog walk among the festive dishes on the table.
The apogee of his draconian dramatics came on Sunday, when he ordered a fighter jet to intercept a commercial airliner bound for Lithuania and carrying one of his self-exiled opponents, journalist Raman Pratasevich. Belarusian authorities said the action was taken after a bomb threat was made against the plane, but Western officials dismissed that as a preposterous attempt to disguise an act of piracy.
A strapping figure, Lukashenko presents a tough-guy image by frequently playing ice hockey, including a spring 2020 outing where he dismissed the coronavirus by asking a TV reporter if she saw any viruses “flying around” in the arena.
Once well-regarded by his countrymen as an anti-corruption leader, Lukashenko lost their trust through decades of jailing opponents, stifling independent media and holding elections that gave him term after term in power.
Protests had broken out after some elections, but not sizable or sustained enough to long withstand club-swinging police and mass detentions. Only after the 2020 vote did his opponents seem to harness the discontent: The country’s economic deterioration and Lukashenko’s cavalier refusal to act against the coronavirus added to their long-term dismay over repression.
The protests lasted for months, petering out only when winter set in. But authorities didn’t let up, reportedly arresting people for no obvious cause or on pretenses such as wearing clothing in the red-and-white colors of the opposition.
Lukashenko was born in a Belarusian village and followed a conventional path for an ambitious provincial Soviet. After graduating from an agricultural academy, he became a political instructor in the border guard service and eventually rose to director of a collective farm. In 1990, he became a member of the Belarusian Supreme Soviet, the republic’s parliament.
He was its only member in 1991 to vote against the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When he won the new country’s first presidential election three years later, he appeared in many ways to be a man stuck in time, keeping Belarus as an eerie and dysfunctional Soviet vestige.
While neighboring ex-Soviet republics adapted to capitalism, Lukashenko kept much of the Belarusian economy under state control. That strategy initially won him support because Belarusians did not suffer the confusions and deprivations of “shock therapy” economic restructuring.
But ossified state control of industries could not keep up with market economies’ energy and flexibility; the Belarusian ruble was forced into repeated devaluations, and as of 2020, the average monthly wage was a paltry $480.
Under Lukashenko, the country’s main security agency retained its symbolically baleful acronym of KGB. He also pushed a referendum that made the new national flag nearly identical to the flag Belarus used as a Soviet republic.
Belarus also continues to carry out capital punishment, unlike every other country in Europe, and in a macabre manner echoing Soviet show-trial executions. According to reports, the prisoner is brought to a room and told that all appeals have been rejected. Then the condemned is forced to kneel and shot in the back of the head, a process lasting about two minutes from beginning to end.
When Lukashenko became president, Belarus had little experience of being an independent country; prior to its years as a Soviet republic, it had been a piece of other empires with only a brief attempt at sovereignty in the wake of World War I. Sandwiched between Russia to the east and reformist, Western-looking Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, Belarus was in a strategic position.
Lukashenko leaned strongly east. In 1997, he signed an agreement with Russia on forming a “union state” of close economic, military and political ties, but stopping short of full merger.
The agreement propped up Belarus’ economy, which depended heavily on Russian oil at below-market prices. But Lukashenko harbored beliefs that Russia aimed to eventually take over Belarus entirely, and he was increasingly vocal about them.
Russia apparently became disenchanted with Lukashenko and suspicions persist that Moscow wanted him out of the way and worked to undermine him in 2020. The former head of a bank owned by Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom was seen as a main electoral challenger before he was jailed and kept off the ballot. Belarus, meanwhile, alleged that Russia had sent in private military contractors to undermine the election.
Lukashenko’s years of repression and brutality had all but burned his bridges with the West. Faced with massive protests, he had nowhere to turn for help but Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had said he was prepared to send police to help stabilize the situation if demonstrations turned violent, but he never made the move.
