OAC head higher-ranked than KGB chairman

At a meeting Lukashenka seated officials according to the degree of influence.

By the seating at the yesterday’s meeting on the functioning and development of Belarusian energetics one may judge of the distribution of forces between the main special services of the country: which of them is more important, which is closer to Lukashenka, which he trusts more, a blogger d-zholik writes.

Obviously, the Operational and Analytics Center has the domineering role, it is considered more important than KGB, and the head of the OAC Siarhei Shpiahun is senior to the chairman of KGB Valer Vakulchyk.

Although it would seem that Major General Valer Vakulchyk is higher in rank, is a representative of higher commissioned stuff, and Siarhei Shpiahun is only a colonel.

If the seating had been made according to the alphabet according to the second names or the names of the agencies, Vakulchyk would have also been seated first and Shpiahun after him.

And according to state awards Shpiahun, to put it mildly, loses a lot to Vakulchyk.

In 2010 Lukashenka’s decree was adopted on “Censorship on the internet”, which obliged providers to register users and store the information on the services provided to them. The control over the internet was delegated to the Operational and Analytics Center (OAC) under Lukashenka’s command. Based on the decisions of the OAC and other related agencies a list of forbidden pages is made. Providers are obliged to block the access to the pages from the list for state bodies, educational and cultural institutions. Among the forbidden resources there is a number of oppositional web-pages, including the charter97.org web-site.