Moskovskiy Komsomolets: A new lord to ruin greedy blackmailer Lukashenka

Russian mass media write how Lukashenka has decided to save his reputation with the help of a British PR man again.

Earlier Lukashenka was mostly criticized in the West, where he is considered “the last dictator of Europe”, but now he started to lose footing in Russia as well. Thanks to the informational war between the Kremlin and Minsk, more and more people consider him a greedy blackmailer. Lord Peter Selwyn Gummer Chadlington, chief executive of Huntsworth, an international public relations group, is to save the situation, “Moskovskiy Komsomolets” reports.

Lukashenka had already had a British image-maker, Lord Timothy Bell. The Belarusian authorities invited the “guru of PR” who worked for Margaret Thatcher and Boris Berezovsky, to improve the public image of the “dictator”. A contract with him lasted only one year, and many people were puzzled why Lukashenka was dissatisfied.

In fact, Lord Bell had done everything to image of the Belarusian leader. He arranged interviews for him with such media giants as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and others. Thanks to his efforts, Belarus received a possibility to participate in the Eastern Partnership, a promising program of the European Union.

According to some reports, the first lord had been recommended to Lukashenka by Berezovsky. Bell confessed that he got millions of the contract. “It is unknown with what items of the state budget these expenses were included,” Belarusian oppositional mass media recall. In summer 2008 Bell said optimistically that the upcoming presidential election in the country would be recognized by the West. However foreign observers and analysts have not approved either the vote or summing up its results. Even such an outstanding PR man as Bell failed to render impossible.

And now Lukashenka has decided to change the image of the Belarusian economy. But instead of real headway in the sphere of economy, he decided to follow a well-worn path. Today the main problem of Belarus is absence of investments. And Lord Chadlington is to be engaged in attracting them. In the eyes of the Western capital a county with a socialist structure of administration and an authoritarian regime should become attractive. The new lord has made a statement on Belarusian TV already, and he said self-confidently that he knows how the needed result could be achieved.

However, skeptical experts believe that Chadlington won’t endure long as well. His reputation is not very impressive. The most well-known episode of his career was resignation from the position of Chairman of the Royal Opera House in December 1997. Over two years Chadlington ruined the Royal Opera House. Skeptics believe that the same fate awaits the remnants of the Belarusian industry under the wise PR command of the British lord.