Syarhei Haydukevich

Syarhei Haydukevich is a Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus. He receives two pensions: the military and parliamentary one.

Mr Haydukevich was born on September 8, 1954 in Minsk. His Mother Halina headed the Minsk regional branch of the USSR State Bank, and in 1990 she consulted the National Bank. His Father Vasil was the military man.

In Soviet times, Mr Haydukevich made a military career. After graduating from the Minsk Higher Antiaircraft Missile School (1976) he served 15 years in the Army, including as a member of the group of military experts in Iraq (1982-1983). Later, he would visit the country as the Head of the official Belarusian delegation. There was also information that he was selling Iraqi oil using some grey schemes. Mr Haydukevich graduated from the Military Command Academy of Air Defense named after Marshal Zhukov (1989).

In the first years of independence, he worked in the KGB, where he said he was engaged in providing social assistance to former soldiers, policemen and employees of the KGB. Then he was a Deputy of the Committee on Social Protection of Servicemen under the Council of Ministers (1992-94).

In 1991-1994 he headed the Leftist Popular Movement of Belarus, which, among others, included the Liberal Democratic Party and the Party of Communists of Belarus. The Popular Movement was supposed to be the political support of the Prime Minister Vyacheslau Kebich before the presidential elections, and ceased to exist almost immediately after them.

Since 1995 Mr Haydukevich has been the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus. More than a third of its members were former security officials and Afghan veterans. Since 2001, Mr Haydukevich has been the regular participant of the presidential election. However, in 2010, he withdrew his candidacy because he believed the campaign was a farce. For a certain period he was Deputy of the House of Representatives (2004-08).

In 2013 Syarhei Haydukevich published a book of poems called ‘My life – Belarus”.

He is married for the second time and has two sons from his first marriage. Aleh was the head of the two police departments in the capital, now he is First Deputy in the LDP. The wife took out Vasil to Germany when he was small, after that he did not see his father. The second wife has a daughter, they live in Austria.