Alexander Lukashenko, Soviet-style autocrat on Europe's doorstep

Once described by the US as presiding over Europe's "last true remaining dictatorship", President Alexander Lukashenko has kept Belarus in international isolation for more than two decades.

Known for his folksy charisma and eccentric style, the mustachioed leader, however, seems to have recently edged his nation of 9.5 million in from the cold, balancing off long-standing ally Russia and the West over the crisis in neighbouring Ukraine.  

The 61-year-old authoritarian president nicknamed Batka, or "Father," is widely expected to be re-elected to his fifth term in Sunday's presidential elections, boycotted by the democratic opposition.

Since Lukashenko was first elected in 1994, Belarus remains arguably the most Soviet of the former USSR republics. The landlocked country in eastern Europe still commemorates the Bolshevik Revolution and has a secret police called the KGB.

After the last polls in 2010, when he claimed a near 80 percent landslide victory, Lukashenko launched a crackdown on his opponents that saw challengers jailed and unprecedented Western economic sanctions and travel bans slapped on him and his allies.

While Lukashenko is dependent on Russia and prefers to use its language, he has appeared wary of Moscow's manoeuvring in the crisis in "Brother" Ukraine and has criticised the Kremlin's landgrab of Crimea in February 2014.

"First get to grips with the land that you already have," Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian opposition channel TV Dozhd.  

"As for integrating or attaching (land), you should be cautious about this."

While trenchantly insisting on his independence from Moscow he has still signed up Belarus to the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union.

In an unlikely diplomatic coup, Lukashenko has thrust Minsk into the spotlight by hosting several rounds of peace talks on eastern Ukraine including German and French leaders Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande.

The mercurial president, who has hired a Western image-maker, further bolstered his standing with the European Union by releasing six opposition leaders in August, and the 28-nation bloc has said it could suspend sanctions against him depending on how Sunday's poll goes.

- Grooming his son? -

The towering 190-centimetre-tall (six-foot-two-inch) Lukashenko has cultivated his man-of-the-people image and likes to be photographed picking potatoes or chatting to workers at a tractor factory.

The leader -- who claims to own no property and to earn a salary of $31,000 -- was recently photographed teaching French actor Gerard Depardieu, who has taken Russian citizenship, how to scythe grass on his country estate.

While some have said that Lukashenko's oversized character has made it impossible for anyone in his circle to follow him, the president has sparked speculation he could be grooming his youngest son, 11-year-old Nikolai, with whom he appears frequently in public and has called his "talisman".

The solemn fair-haired boy, often dressed in a miniature version of his father's outfit, accompanies Lukashenko to international events including the United Nations General Assembly last month, where they posed unsmilingly for a photo with the Obamas.

Despite his attempts to soften his image with the West, Lukashenko is proud of being a homophobe, famously saying he would "rather be a dictator than gay", and at his speech at the UN in September, asking: "Who is going to give birth to the children?"

Despite recurring economic crises in the country that send consumers sweeping store shelves and selling Belarussian rubles, the former collective farm director has stood firmly by the policies of Soviet command economy.

- 'Clearly disturbed' -

The son of a single mother, Lukashenko rose through the ranks of Communist Party youth organisations to head a group of agrarian enterprises and construction material shops.

He soon used that base to win a seat on the republic's Supreme Soviet, where he became famous for being the only lawmaker to vote against a pact dissolving the Soviet Union in December 1991 -- a distinction he used to ride to the presidency in July 1994.

According to a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, US diplomats concluded after the 2006 election that a "defiant Lukashenko intends to stay in power indefinitely and sees no reason to change his course".

It also described him as "clearly disturbed".

In his recent speech at the UN General Assembly, Lukashenko blamed the conflicts wracking the globe from Ukraine to Syria on "the artificial cult of individual rights and freedoms, to the detriment of public interests."

"There will never be a place for anarchy, lawlessness and violence on Belarussian soil," he said. "Not under any slogans -- even those of democracy."
Source: AFP