President of Belarus, has been ruling the country since 1994 for four terms.

Born in 1954 in the town Kopys, Orsha rayon, Vitsebsk region. In 2010 he changed his birthday from 30 to 31 of August.

Most of her life, his mother worked in kolkhoz as a milkmaid. Information about his father is not available. Lukashenka once said that he died during the Second World War.

He dreamed to study journalism, but eventually graduated from the History Department of the Mahiliou Pedagogical Institute (1975). He worked mainly in the party and ideological positions in various institutions in Mahiliou. He wanted to head a collective farm, for this he graduated from Agricultural Academy in Horki. In 1987, he headed the most backward collective farm in Shklov called Haradzets, where he rented to employees land, premises and equipment, and they gave a part of the products to the farm and divided the remaining part. He wrote a book about his approach called ‘Haradzets lessons’. While working in the field of agriculture, he had a criminal case launched against him for beating a machine operator, which was closed when Lukashenka was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the 12th convocation, and he was able to enjoy parliamentary immunity. He headed the collective farm until 1994.

In the Parliament, in 1993, he led commission investigating the activity of commercial organizations created under government agencies. The main result of the commission’s work was the dismissal of the Chairman of the Supreme Council Stanislau Shushkevich.

He participated in the presidential elections of 1994  as an independent candidate. After the victory he got in conflict with the parliament. One of the stumbling points was the referendum of 1995, which was eventually held by Lukashenka. Before that he ordered the riot police to clean up the Houses of Parliament from the MPs who were holding a hunger strike. Results of the referendum were not recognized by the West, which became the beginning of the conflict.

In 1995 he set a course for rapprochement with Russia, signing a the Union State agreement with Boris Yeltsin two years later. In 1996 he initiated the referendum, which greatly expanded his powers. Then began the brutal crackdowns on opposition protests, and since 1997 there have been arrests of the most active of his opponents. Later four more of them went missing.

He tried to sign an agreement with Russia on the establishment of a single state which would have a single president.

In 2004 he held a referendum that allowed him to govern the country for more than two presidential terms. The results of the presidential elections, which took place after 1994, were not recognized by the international community and were accompanied by mass protests. The latest one in 2010 was dispersed particularly brutally.

Lukashenka has been regularly banned from entering the US and EU countries. In 2008, he turned to the well-known PR-manager Lord Timothy Bell,  who took part in the preparation of successful election campaigns of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and improved the international image of many countries. Belarus adopted a more cautious foreign policy, and Lukashenka began taking his younger illegitimate son Kolya on official visits to other states. Together they visited Pope Benedict XVI. In 2009, the contract with Mr Bell was not extended.

Lukashenka never divorced his wife Halina Zhaunerovich, with whom he has not lived together since 1994. They have two sons: Viktar (Assistant to President on National Security) and Dmitri (Chairman of the Presidential Sports Club).