Bodyguard :: Charter'97 :: News

The new chief of the presidential Security Council appeared yesterday near Alexander Lukashenko. Major-general Yuri Zhadobin was appointed to this post from the position of deputy Interior Minister of Belarus and commander of internal forces. There’s no law-enforcement structure in the country, which would be more loyal to the president and whose loyalty has been tested so much.

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Zhadobin was appointed an interior forces commander back on March 26, 1999. Over 1,5 months before that appointment Yuri Sivakov became the Interior Minister of Belarus. It was him who appointed Zhadobin to the post, for earlier on Sivakov personally controlled the interior troops. The new appointee has a “tank education”, also being qualified in the civil defense system. A faithful state servant, he follows Minister Sivakov’s lifestyle – “I am a man of the state”.

The official press calls the interior forces “elite”. Apart from regular dispersals of peaceful dissent and mass arrests of opposition, this “elite” is held responsible for running the “death squads”. The notorious SOBR grouping is part of the interior forces structure. And it is them, according to the independent public investigation commission, who used to kidnap and kill prominent Belarusian citizens.

Now the commander of such a “heroic” structure Yuri Zhadobin becomes Lukashenko’s personal bodyguard. All his predecessors at the post were soon promoted to the key security posts. The staff rotation at this position is quite regular. There’s a simple explanation of that. Lukashenko doesn’t trust anyone and cannot sleep in peace. His security is ensured by thousands of trained professionals from the personal security service.

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